How diffraction of a wave through a aperture in terms of the uncertain

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Flupdoodle
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How could you describe qualitatively how diffraction of a wave through a aperture in terms of the uncertainty principle?


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lets take a single slit and shine light through it . If i make this slit smaller and force the light to go through it , i know to much about the position of the photons they must be though that opening (delta x) so now i must get an uncertainty in the momentum of the photons , so (dx)(dp)=(h-bar) , When i make the slit to small the light starts to spread out and diffract .
The smaller i make the slit the more uncertainty i will have in the photons momentum .
I don't know if this is what you were looking for .
 


cragar said:
lets take a single slit and shine light through it . If i make this slit smaller and force the light to go through it , i know to much about the position of the photons they must be though that opening (delta x) so now i must get an uncertainty in the momentum of the photons , so (dx)(dp)=(h-bar) , When i make the slit to small the light starts to spread out and diffract .
The smaller i make the slit the more uncertainty i will have in the photons momentum .
I don't know if this is what you were looking for .

Does that treatment yield a sin(x)/x distribution? Wave theory does- and it agrees with measurement very well.
 


Oh I see, now. Interesting. The calculations do, in fact, seem to use a wave approach to get actual values but relate it to uncertainty. Fair enough - it's always useful to tie things together.