Physics 3232 Optics I: Introduction

Prof. Rick Trebino, Georgia Tech

Light has always fascinated us. www.frog.gatech.edu

Let there be light!

Its how we understand the world.

The great revolutions in physics

and current tests of them.

What is light? Particle? Wave?

Telecom and imaging.

Interactions with matter and itself.

Why do things look the way they do? Windows/mirrors.

Lasers/light bulbs. Rainbows, sunsets, sunglasses, cameras.

The History of Optics
The better we understand optics, the more
powerful optical devices we invent.
And the more powerful optical devices we
invent, the better we understand optics
and our universe.
The History of Optics

Humans have
been trying to
understand
light and its Diffraction
properties for
millennia. Mirror

Reflection

Refraction and
dispersion

Is light composed of waves

or particles?
Optics in Ancient History
A mirror was discovered in workers quarters near the tomb of
Pharaoh Sesostris II (1900 BCE).

Lens from the

Assyrian
Palace of
Nimrud (Iraq)
(750 BCE).
Pyramid of Sesostris II

Ancient Greeks (500-300 BCE)

Burning glass (refraction) mentioned by Aristophanes (424 BCE).
Law of reflection: Optics by Euclid (300 BCE).
Refraction in water mentioned by Plato in The Republic.
But Euclid thought that the eye emits rays that reflect off objects.
The Pinhole Camera and Light Rays
The pinhole camera was first
described by Chinese philoso-
pher, Mozi (470 - 390 BCE).
It could be an entire room or a
small box.

The pinhole camera, also called the

camera obscura (darkened room),
established the notion of light rays
and geometrical optics.
Pinhole camera image
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 the Middle Ages: Alhazen
Arab scientist Alhazen (~1000 AD)
studied spherical and parabolic
mirrors.

Alhazen correctly proposed that

the eyes passively receive light
reflected from objects, rather
than emanating light rays
themselves.

He studied the process of sight, the

structure of the eye, image
formation in the eye, and the visual
system.

He wrote a seven-volume treatise

on optics in 1021.
Optics in Early 17th Century Europe:
the Telescope
Hans Lippershey applied for a
patent on the Galilean
telescope, consisting of two
lenses, in 1608.

Galileo (1564-1642) used one to

look at our moon, Jupiter and its
moons, and the sun.

Two of Galileos telescopes

Galileos drawings of the moon

Johannes Kepler
Kepler developed a theory of
geometrical optics (light rays) and
used it to show why telescopes
work.
And he discovered the small-angle
approximation to the Law of
Refraction:

q1 n1 Johannes Kepler
(15711630)

n2
q2 n1 q1 n2 q2
ni is the refractive index
of each medium.
Willibrord Snell

Snell discovered the Law of

Refraction, now named after
him: Snells Law.

q1 n1
Willibrord Snell
(1591-1626)
n2
q2
n1 sin(q1 ) n2 sin(q2 )
ni is the refractive index
of each medium.
 17th Century Optics:
Descartes

Sound was known to be a

wave: a collective motion of
particles.

Descartes reasoned that light

must be like sound.

So he modeled light as
pressure variations of
unknown particles in an
unknown medium (aether).
Rene Descartes (1596-1659)
Christiaan Huygens
Huygens realized that light slowed
down on entering dense media (media
with high refractive indices).

Christiaan Huygens
(1629-1695)
Huygens theory of diffraction

He also extended the wave theory of optics to diffraction, the

tendency of light to bend around corners:
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
Newton realized that white light is
composed of all colors and invented a
reflective telescopean improvement
over the Galilean telescope.

So did
Newton
think light
was a
wave?
Isaac Newton
Or a particle?
(1642-1727)

After remaining ambivalent for many

years, he eventually concluded that
light was made of particles.
 18th & 19th Century Optics:
Young discovered Thomas Young
interference of lightthe
ability of two light beams to
either add or subtract.

His famous two-slit interference

Thomas Young
experiment proved convincingly
(1773-1829)
that light is a wave.
Often, beams interfere by themselves.

Light reflected from the front and back surfaces of the bubble wall
interfere.
The color (wavelength) we see experiences constructive interference.
The Optics of
Many Colors: 4
sin(t )
Fourier
Analysis
4
sin(3t )
Here, we see that 3
a square wave is
a sum of many
sine waves of
different
frequencies (or
4
wavelengths). sin(5t )
5
The Fourier transform extends the idea
to a continuous range of frequencies.
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 ) 2
1 E ( ) exp(i t ) d Joseph Fourier
(1768 1830)

2
The spectrum of a light wave is given by: E(w )
19th Century Optics:
Augustin Fresnel

Fresnel derived expressions for the

reflected and transmitted waves when
light is incident on an interface at an
oblique incidence angle.

Augustin Fresnel
100% transmission (1788-1827)

The key parameters are

the light incidence angle,
its polarization, and the
ratio of the refractive
100% reflection indices of the two media.
Fresnel also developed a rigorous theory
It was known since the 17th century
for diffraction.
that light bends around corners.

The light pattern emerging

from a single small square
opening

Fresnels theory of diffraction further established light as a wave.

He showed that diffraction can be described by a 2D Fourier transform.

19th Century: James Clerk Maxwell

Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism

with his now famous equations.

B
E = 0 E = -
t
E
B = 0 B = me
t James Clerk Maxwell
(1831-1879)

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

c is the velocity of light, and no charges are present.

Using them, he showed that light is an electromagnetic wave.

Maxwells equations simplify to the
wave equation for the electric field.

1 2
E
E - 2 2 =0
2

c t
which has a simple sine- or cosine-wave solution:

E (r , t ) cos(t k r )
where 2/t ; t is the period of the wave; |k| 2/l ;
l is the wavelength of the wave; and c = l / t = / k

The same is true for the magnetic field.

Light is an electromagnetic wave.
The electric and magnetic fields are in phase.

Electric field Magnetic field y

x
z

The electric field, the magnetic field, and the propagation direction
are all perpendicular.

But it was still thought that light was a vibration of some sort of
medium, aether, just as sound waves are vibrations in air.
 The Interaction of Light and Matter
Light excites atoms, which then emit more light: interference!

Electric field
Electric field Electron emitted by Incident light E inc (t )
at atom position electron

+
Einc (t ) xe (t) Eemitted (t ) Emitted light Eemitted (t )
(out of phase
= by 180)

On resonance (the light frequency is

Transmitted light
the same as that of the atom) (weaker)

The crucial issue is the relative phase of the incident light and this re-
emitted light. If these two waves are ~180 out of phase, destructive
interference occurs, and the beam will be attenuatedabsorption.
If theyre ~90 out of phase: the speed of light changesrefraction.
Absorption of light varies massively with
wavelength.
Penetration depth into water vs. wavelength
1 km Water is clear in the
Penetration depth into water

visible, but not in

Microwave
IR UV
X-ray other spectral
1m regions.
Radio
Notice that the
1 mm penetration depth varies
by over ten orders of
magnitude!
1 m
Knowledge of a
mediums internal
1 km 1m 1 mm 1 m 1 nm
vibrations are all that
Wavelength is necessary to
Visible understand such
spectrum curves.
Variation of the refractive index with
wavelength (dispersion) causes the
beautiful prismatic effects we know and
love.

Input Dispersed beam

white
beam

Prism

Again, knowledge of a mediums internal vibrations are all thats

necessary to understand the dispersion of the refractive index.
Rainbows result from
reflection and
refraction of sunlight
in water droplets.

Dispersion is
important in
rainbows and
many other optical
phenomena (its
often a problem).
So light is definitely a wave.
But what exactly is waving? Aether. But what exactly is aether?

By the late 19th century, nothing was known about the aether.
Even measuring the earths velocity relative to it could be helpful.
Michelson & Morley
Using an interferometer, they
found that the earths velocity with
respect to the aether was zerono
matter the direction of the earths
motion. This shed serious doubt on
the existence of the aether.
Albert Michelson Edward Morley
(1852-1931) (1838-1923)
Aether
Input
beam

Mirror
Output
Beam- beam
splitter

Mirror
20th Century Optics: Albert Einstein
Einstein showed that light:
is a phenomenon of empty space
and
has a velocity thats constant,
independent of observer velocity.

Bye bye aether!

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

These conclusions had additional

far-reaching consequences,
including the warping of space
and time and the nuclear age.
 20th Century Optics:
Max Planck
Heated objectsblackbodiesemit spectra
that depend only on their temperature.
But classical physics couldnt explain this,
instead predicting an Ultraviolet Catastrophe.

Classical
Rayleigh-
Max Planck (1858-1947)
Spectral Intensity
Jeans
formula
Planck found that, assuming
that light was emitted and
absorbed in quanta of hn
Experimental data
yielded the correct spectrum and Plancks theory
(h is Planck's constant,
6.626 10-34 Joule-sec). Wavelength (nm)
Einstein Again
The photoelectric effect: Incident
light shining on a material transfers
energy to electrons, ejecting them.

Electron Einstein showed that the kinetic

kinetic
energy energy (K) of the ejected electrons
could only be explained if the
n0 energy absorbed from light is hn :

K hn f

where f is the materials potential energy to be overcome before an

electron could escape.
Thus, Einstein showed that, in addition
to being a wave, light is also a particle.

Very very dim Very dim Dim

Proof of this fact is
that photographs
taken in dimmer
light look grainier.

When we detect
very weak light,
we find that its,
in fact, made up
of particles. Bright Very bright Very very bright

This unintuitive aspect of light (and everything else)

continues to puzzle scientists even today!
Photons also have momentum.
If an atom emits a photon, it recoils in the opposite direction, so
photons must have momentum.

If the atoms are excited and then emit light, the atomic beam spreads
much more than if the atoms are not excited and do not emit.
A photons momentum is h/l. Even though photons have no mass!
Photons & Radiation Pressure
Because photons have momentum, they also exert pressure.

When radiation pressure cannot be neglected:

Comet tails (other forces are small)
Stellar interiors (it resists gravity)
Petawatt laser (1015 Watts!)

Viking space craft (would've missed

Mars by 15,000 km)
Einstein Yet Again!
Einstein also showed that, in addition to absorption and
spontaneous emission, photons could undergo stimulated
emission in which a photon induces an excited molecule to emit
another photon.

Considering all three processes yields a simple particle-based

explanation of blackbody spectra.

Excited medium
Stimulated
emission in a
laser:

To build a laser, simply place mirrors before and after the medium.
20th Century Optics: Nonlinear optics
yields many exotic effects.

At high intensities, beams

that cross can affect each
other.

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.

Sending high-intensity infrared

laser light into a crystal yielded
this display of green light:
21st-Century Optics: Ultrashort laser
pulses are
the shortest Measured spectrogram Retrieved spectrogram
0.5

Wavelength (mm)
events ever
created. 0.4

0.3
How do we -20 0 20 -20 0 20
measure such a Delay (fs) Delay (fs)

short event? 0 1

We must use the Time domain Frequency domain

event to measure
Intensity

itself.

Phase
This pulse is only
0
4.5 10-15 seconds long, -20 0 20 600 800 1000
that is, 4.5 femtoseconds. Time (fs) Wavelength (nm)
2015: the International Year of Light!
It celebrated:

1015: Works on optics by Ibn Alhazen

1815: Light as a wave proposed by Fresnel
1865: Maxwells electromagnetic theory of
light
1905: Einsteins theory of the photoelectric
effect, confirming the existence of
photons
1915: Light in gravity and cosmology through Einsteins general
theory of relativity
1965: Discovery of the cosmic microwave background, and Charles
Kaos achievements on the transmission of light through
fibers for optical communication