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Pre-Medical
CHAPTER

22| WAVE NATURE OF LIGHT & WAVE OPTICS

HUYGEN'S WAVE THEORY INTERFERENCE : YDSE
Huygen'sin 1678 assumed that asource emits light Resultant intensity for coherent sources
in the form of waves,
I=, +, +2/1,1, cos ,
Fach point sOurce of light is a centre of
Resultant intensity for incoherent sources
disturbance from which waves spread in all
directions. The locus of all the particles of the I-1,+,
medium vibrating in the same phase at a given Intensity width of slit < (amplitude)
instant is called a wavefront. 2

max.
Each point on awave front is a source of new a, - a, )
min
(
disturbance, called secondary wavelets. These nà.D
wavelets are spherical and travel with speed of Distance of n bright fringe x, d
light in that medium.
The forward envelope of the secondary wavelets
at any instant gives the new wavefront.
In homogeneous medium, the wave front is d

d'sine.
always perpendicular to the direction of wave
propagation.
Plane wavefront Spherical wavefront
Path difference = nà wheren =0, 1, 2.3.
B secondary
wave
(2n -1) D
Distance of n" dark fringe x, = 2d
Primary
Source Path difference=-(2n-1) where
2 n - 1,2, 3...
Secondary
Source Fringe width B D
d

Angular fringe width = D A

d
A' B

COHERENT SOURCES : Fringe visibility na. nn 100 %

"max

Two sources will be coherent if and only if they If a transparent sheets of referactive index u
produce waves of same frequency (and hence and thickness t is introduced in one of the paths
wavelength) and have constant phase of interfering waves, optical path will becomes
difference w.r.t. time. ut' instead of 't. Entire fringe pattern is
INCOHERENT SOURCES: displaced by D[(u- )]) 1)t towards the
incoherent if they
lwo sources are said to be side in which the thin sheet is introduced
initial phase
nave different frequency and without any change in fringe width.
difference is not constant w.r.t. time.

119
 Ans ne th the n
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Fraunhofer's
Intensity curve of
SHIFTING OF FRINGES L,|Intensity

22
22 61
61
-22/a - a O /a 22/a
Angle 0

" Path difference produced by a slab AX = (u-1t POLARISATION OF LIGHT

present in just one
If the vibrations of a wave are
"Fringe shift. Ax =Pu-1)t =u-1)t direction in a plane perpendicular to
the direction of
polarised o
" Number of fringes shift propagation, the wave is said to be
restricting
shift t(u-1)D/d_(u-1)t plane polarised. The phenomenon of
fringe width AD/d direction in the
the oscillations of a wave to just one
waves.
transverse plane is called polarisation of
Polarizers
Light Passing Through Crossed
Polarizer 2
Polarizer 1
(Horizontal)
(Vertical)
Incident Beam
DIFFRACTION (Unpolarized)

Fraunhofer's diffraction : The source and

Screen are placed at large distances from thel Vertically

Polarized
Light Wave
aperture or the obstacle and converging lens is
used to observed the diffraction pattern. The
incident wavefront is planar one. MALUS LAW
: asin0. = nà
The intensity of transmitted light passed through an
For minima
analyser is I=l,cos'e
O For maxima :asin., = (2n + 1) 2 (0=angle between transmission directions of polariser
22D and analyser)
O Linear width of central maxima : W, = a

22.
maxima W, = POLARISATION BY REFLECTION
O Angular width of central
Brewster's Law : The tangent of polarising angle ot
incidence at which reflected light becomes completely
plane polarised is numerically equal to refractive
index of the medium. u=tan i,;
i, =Brewster's angle and i,+r,=90°
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POLARISATION BY SCATTERING light

transmitted
polaroid and rotate the polaroid, the
If we look the
at blue portion of the sky through a
intensitu.
shows rise and fall of
Incident sunlight
(Unpolarised)
Nitrogen
molecule
Scattered
light

of incidence is found to be plane

scattered light screen in a direction perpendicular to the direction
The
polarised.

KEY POINTS
good in the phenomenon of interference.
The law of conservation of energy holds its path
shadow of slit but locus of a point which moves such a way that
Fringes are neither image nor
constant.
difference from the two sources remains
S,S,.
coherent point sources are hyperboloids with axis
In YDSE the interference fringes for two wavelengths will be
with bichromatic light, the fringes of two
If the interference experiment is repeated
coincident for the first time when

n(onger -(n +1)(P).noter

is detected when two coherent sources are infinitely close to each other, because
No interference pattem
1

path
apoint P the light is coming from two different souce S, & S, separated by distance d then
If at
'P wll never exceeed d.
difference Ax between the waves reaching at point