Diffraction of light

1. Mar 14, 2008

a-lbi

What describes Airy equation in theoretical description of light diffraction?

2. Mar 16, 2008

Claude Bile

3. Mar 16, 2008

a-lbi

Writing more precisly. I would like to see derivation from (for instance) wave equation to get Airy equation in a light diffraction problem.

4. Mar 17, 2008

Claude Bile

To find a diffraction pattern for a given aperture, you need to apply the theory of Fraunhofer diffraction.

To do this, define an aperture function in cylindrical coordinates as follows;

a(r) = 1 for r less than or equal to a.
a(r) = 0 for r greater than a.

Where a is the radius of the aperture.

The resultant diffraction pattern is a 2D Fourier transform of this function (i.e. the Airy function). I'm sure you can find the gory details of this calculation somewhere (or maybe post in the math forums).

Claude.

5. Mar 18, 2008

a-lbi

Thank you for your response. I can see that the problem is to get Airy equation from the two dimensional Fourier integral equation. If I have some time I will try to follow the way.