Optics I: Introduction

A short, arbitrary, condensed history of optics

Maxwell's Equations
The Wave Equation
Cool things that happen to light
Total internal reflection
Interference
Diffraction
The Laser
Nonlinear Optics
Ultrafast Optics
The Fourier Transform and Its Key Role in Optics

Optics in Ancient History

Mirror discovered in workers' quarters near tomb of Pharaoh
Sesostris II (1900 BCE).
Ancients used mirrors of polished copper, bronze, and speculum (a
copper/tin alloy).
Ancient Greeks (500-300 BCE)
Burning glass mentioned by Aristophanes (424 BCE)
Law of reflection: Catoptrics by Euclid (300 BCE)
Refraction in water mentioned Plato in The Republic

Romans
Philosopher Seneca (3 BCE65 AD) discussed globes of water
as lenses.

Arab scientist Alhazen (1000 AD) studied spherical and parabolic

mirrors.

Ancient Greeks: Ancient light weapons

Early Greek and Roman

historians report that
Archimedes equipped
several hundred people
with metal mirrors to
focus sunlight onto
Roman warships in the
battle of Syracuse (213
-211 BCE).

This story is probably apocryphal.

Optics in early 17th-century Europe

Hans Lippershey applied for a
patent on the Galilean telescope in
1608.
Galileo (1564-1642) used one to
look at Jupiter and its moons.
Francisco Fontana of Naples
(1580-1656) replaced the concave
eyepiece of the Galilean telescope
with a convex lens, yielding a
Keplerian telescope.
Willibrord Snell (1591-1626) of Leyden discovered the Law of
Refraction, now named after him.

Johannes Kepler (15711630)

Discovered total internal reflection

Showed why telescopes work

Developed a first-order theory of

geometrical optics

Discovered the small-angle approximation to the law

of refraction

More 17th-century Optics

Descartes modeled light as pressure variations
in a medium.
Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) developed his
"Principle of Least Time."

Rene Descartes (1596-1659)

Francesco Maria Grimaldi of Bologna (1618-1663)

discovered diffraction.
Robert Hooke (1635-1703) studied colored
interference between thin films and developed the
first wave theory of light.

Christiaan Huygens
(1629-1695)
Huygens extended the wave theory of
optics.
He realized that light slowed down on
entering dense media.
He explained polarization and
double refraction.

Double refraction

Huygens principle
says that a wave
propagates as if
the wave-front were
composed of an array of point sources
each emitting a
spherical wave.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

"I procured me a triangular glass prism to try
therewith the celebrated phenomena of
colours." (Newton, 1665)

Isaac Newton

Newton introduced a new level of rigor to optics. At age 23, he did

his famous experiments dispersing light into its spectral components.
After remaining ambivalent for many years, he eventually concluded
that it was evidence for a particle theory of light, but others disagreed.

18th and 19th century Optics:

Euler, Young, and Fresnel
Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) further developed the wave theory and
designed achromatic lenses by combining lenses of different
materials.
Thomas Young (1773-1829) explained interference and colored
fringes and showed that light was
a transverse wave (and helped to
translate hieroglyphics).
Augustin Fresnel (1788-1827) did experiments to establish the wave theory and
derived expressions for reflected and
transmitted waves.
Augustin Fresnel

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879),

Michelson (1852-1931) & Morley
(1838-1923)
Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism
with his now famous equations and showed that light is an electromagnetic wave
propagating through the aether.

James Clerk Maxwell

Michelson and Morley then made careful measurements to attempt

to measure the earth's velocity with respect to the aether and found
it to be zero, effectively disproving the existence of the aether.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Einstein showed that light:

is a phenomenon of empty space;

has a velocity that is constant,

independent of observer velocity,
which has incredible consequences
for the concepts of space and time;
Albert Einstein

is both a wave and a particle.

The equations of optics are

Maxwells equations.
r r
E /
r r
B 0

r
r r
B
E
t
r
r r
E
B
t

r
r
where E is the electric field, B is the magnetic

field, is the charge density, is the permittivity,

and is the permeability of the medium.

Maxwells equations simplify to the

wave equation for the electric field.

r
r
E
2
E 2 0
t
2

which has a simple sine-wave solution:

r r
r r
E (r , t ) cos(t k r )

Light is an electromagnetic wave.

Electric (E) and magnetic (B) fields are in phase.

The electric field, the magnetic field, and the propagation

direction are all perpendicular.

Light excites atoms, which emit light that

adds (or subtracts) with the input light.
An atom is excited by light.
Electric field
at atom

r
E (t )

Electron
cloud

r
xe (t )

Emitted
field

r
E (t )

Incident light
+
Emitted light
=
Transmitted light

On resonance (= 0)

An excited atom vibrates at the frequency of the light that excited it and
re-emits the energy as light of that frequency.
The crucial issue is the relative phase of the incident light and this reemitted light. For example, if these two waves are ~180 out of phase,
the beam will be attenuated. We call this absorption. If theyre ~90
out of phase: the speed of light changes; this is refraction.

Absorption of light varies massively.

1 km

1m

Radio

Microwave

Penetration depth into water

Penetration depth into water vs. wavelength

IR

UV
X-ray

Water is clear in the

visible, but not
elsewhere.

1 mm

Notice that the

penetration depth varies
by over ten orders of
magnitude!

1 m

1 km

1m

1 mm

1 m

Wavelength
Visible
spectrum

1 nm

Variation of the refractive index with

wavelength (Dispersion) causes
beautiful effects we know and love.

Input
white
beam

Dispersed beam

Prism

Prisms disperse white light into its various

colors.

Rainbows result from refraction and

reflection of sunlight in water droplets.
Note that there can be two rainbows, and the top one is inverted.

There are many interesting optics effects in real life

An interesting question is what happens

to light when it encounters a surface.
At an oblique angle, light can be completely transmitted
or completely reflected.

"Total internal reflection" is the basis of optical fibers,

a billion dollar industry.

Light beams can interfere with each

other: Two point sources
Different separations. Note the different patterns.

Constructive vs. destructive interference

Light beams can be intentionally made

to "interfere" with each other.
Using a partially reflecting mirror, we can split a beam into two.

Mirror

Beamsplitter

Mirror

Input
beam

If we then combine the two beams, their relative phase matters.

The above Sagnac Interferometer measures rotation.

Often, they do so by themselves.

Youngs Two-Slit Experiment

What happens when light passes through two slits?

Light pattern
that emerges
fringes

The idea is central to many laser techniques, such as holography,

ultrafast photography, and acousto-optic modulators.
Tests of quantum mechanics also use it.

Fourier decomposing
functions plays a big
role in optics.

Here, we write a square wave as a

sum of sine waves of different
frequency.

The Fourier transform is perhaps the

most important equation in science.
It converts a function of time to one of frequency:

E ( )

E(t) exp(i t) dt

and converting back uses almost the same formula:

E (t )

1
2

E%
( ) exp( i t ) d

Diffraction
Light bends around corners. This is called diffraction.
Light patterns after
passing through
rectangular slit(s):
One slit:
Two slits:

The diffraction pattern far away is the Fourier transform of the slit
transmission vs. position.

Diffraction in Two Dimensions

When light passes through an aperture that is small in both
dimensions, the diffraction pattern far away is the 2D Fourier
transform of the slit transmission vs. position.

The light distribution

far away when light
passes through a
small square hole:

Light is not only a wave, but also a particle.

Photographs taken in dimmer light look grainier.
Very very dim

Bright

Very dim

Very bright

Dim

Very very bright

When we detect very weak light, we find that it is made up of particles.

We call them photons.

The Laser
A laser is a medium that stores energy, surrounded by two mirrors.
Photons entering the medium undergo stimulated emission. As a
result, the irradiance exiting from the medium exceeds that entering it.
A partially reflecting output mirror lets some light out.

A laser will lase if the beam increases in irradiance during a round trip:
that is, if I3 > I0.

Electromagnetism is linear: The

principle of Superposition holds.

If E1(x,y,z,t) and E2(x,y,z,t) are solutions to Maxwells equations,

then E1(x,y,z,t) + E2(x,y,z,t) is also a solution.

This means that light beams can pass through each other.

Nonlinear Optics produces many exotic

effects.
Sending infrared light into a
crystal yielded this display of
green light:

Nonlinear optics allows us to

change the color of a light
beam, to change its shape in
space and time, and to test the
fundamental principles of
quantum mechanics.

Ultrashort laser pulses are the

shortest events ever created.
The pulse intensity vs. time and the spectrum of the shortest event
ever created, a pulse only 4.5 x 10-15 seconds long, that is, 4.5
femtoseconds:

How do we measure such a short event?

It is necessary to use the
"FROG technique" developed by Trebino et al.,
which yields a type of
spectrogram of the pulse.

Light is, in short, the most refined

form of matter.
Louis de Broglie