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What Is Dispersion
What Is Dispersion
Although the term is used in the field of optics to describe light and
other electromagnetic waves, dispersion in the same sense can apply to
any sort of wave motion such as acoustic dispersion in the case of sound
and seismic waves, in gravity waves (ocean waves), and for
telecommunication signals along transmission lines (such as coaxial
cable) or optical fiber.
Example:
- The most familiar example of dispersion is probably a rainbow, in which
dispersion causes the spatial separation of a white light into components
of different wavelengths (different colors). However, dispersion also has
an effect in many other circumstances: for example, group velocity
dispersion (GVD) causes pulses to spread in optical fibers, degrading
signals over long distances; also, a cancellation between group-velocity
dispersion and nonlinear effects leads to soliton waves.
Material and Waveguide Dispersion
- Most often, chromatic dispersion refers to bulk material dispersion, that
is, the change in refractive index with optical frequency. However, in
a waveguide there is also the phenomenon of waveguide dispersion, in
which case a wave's phase velocity in a structure depends on its
frequency simply due to the structure's geometry. More generally,
"waveguide" dispersion can occur for waves propagating through any
inhomogeneous structure (e.g., a photonic crystal), whether or not the
waves are confined to some region. In a waveguide, both types of
dispersion will generally be present, although they are not strictly
additive. For example, in fiber optics the material and waveguide
dispersion can effectively cancel each other out to produce a zero-
dispersion wavelength, important for fast fiber-optic communication.
where c is the speed of light in a vacuum and n is the refractive index of the
medium.
In general, the refractive index is some function of the frequency f of the light,
thus n = n(f), or alternatively, with respect to the wave's wavelength n = n(λ). The
wavelength dependence of a material's refractive index is usually quantified by
its Abbe number or its coefficients in an empirical formula such as
the Cauchy or Sellmeier equations.
For visible light, refraction indices n of most transparent materials (e.g., air,
glasses) decrease with increasing wavelength λ:
or alternatively:
In this case, the medium is said to have normal dispersion. Whereas, if the index
increases with increasing wavelength (which is typically the case in the
ultraviolet), the medium is said to have anomalous dispersion.
At the interface of such a material with air or vacuum (index of ~1), Snell's law
predicts that light incident at an angle θ to the normal will be refracted at an angle
arcsin(sin θ/n). Thus, blue light, with a higher refractive index, will be bent more
strongly than red light, resulting in the well-known rainbow pattern.
Group and Phase Velocity
Another consequence of dispersion manifests itself as a temporal effect. The
formula v = c/n calculates the phase velocity of a wave; this is the velocity at which
the phase of any one frequency component of the wave will propagate. This is not
the same as the group velocity of the wave, that is the rate at which changes
in amplitude (known as the envelope of the wave) will propagate. For a
homogeneous medium, the group velocity vg is related to the phase velocity v by
(here λ is the wavelength in vacuum, not in the medium):
If D is greater than zero, the medium is said to have positive dispersion (normal
dispersion). If D is less than zero, the medium has negative dispersion (anomalous
dispersion). If a light pulse is propagated through a normally dispersive medium,
the result is the shorter wavelength components travel slower than the longer
wavelength components. The pulse therefore becomes positively chirped, or up-
chirped, increasing in frequency with time. Conversely, if a pulse travels through
an anomalously dispersive medium, high frequency components travel faster than
the lower ones, and the pulse becomes negatively chirped, or down-chirped,
decreasing in frequency with time.
Dispersion control is also important in lasers that produce short pulses. The overall
dispersion of the optical resonator is a major factor in determining the duration of
the pulses emitted by the laser. A pair of prisms can be arranged to produce net
negative dispersion, which can be used to balance the usually positive dispersion of
the laser medium. Diffraction gratings can also be used to produce dispersive
effects; these are often used in high-power laser amplifier systems. Recently, an
alternative to prisms and gratings has been developed: chirped mirrors. These
dielectric mirrors are coated so that different wavelengths have different
penetration lengths, and therefore different group delays. The coating layers can be
tailored to achieve a net negative dispersion.
In Waveguides
Waveguides are highly dispersive due to their geometry (rather than just to
their material composition). Optical fibers are a sort of waveguide for optical
frequencies (light) widely used in modern telecommunications systems. The rate at
which data can be transported on a single fiber is limited by pulse broadening due
to chromatic dispersion among other phenomena.
In general, for a waveguide mode with an angular frequency ω(β) at a propagation
constant β (so that the electromagnetic fields in the propagation
direction z oscillate proportional to ei(βz−ωt)), the group-velocity dispersion
parameter D is defined as:
where λ = 2πc/ω is the vacuum wavelength and vg = dω/dβ is the group velocity.
This formula generalizes the one in the previous section for homogeneous media,
and includes both waveguide dispersion and material dispersion. The reason for
defining the dispersion in this way is that |D| is the (asymptotic) temporal pulse
spreading Δt per unit bandwidth Δλ per unit distance travelled, commonly reported
in ps/nm/km for optical fibers.
In the case of multi-mode optical fibers, so-called modal dispersion will also lead
to pulse broadening. Even in single-mode fibers, pulse broadening can occur as a
result of polarization mode dispersion (since there are still two polarization
modes). These are not examples of chromatic dispersion as they are not dependent
on the wavelength or bandwidth of the pulses propagated.
In particular, the dispersion parameter D defined above is obtained from only one
derivative of the group velocity. Higher derivatives are known as higher-order
dispersion.[9] These terms are simply a Taylor series expansion of the dispersion
relation β(ω) of the medium or waveguide around some particular frequency. Their
effects can be computed via numerical evaluation of Fourier transforms of the
waveform, via integration of higher-order slowly varying envelope
approximations, by a split-step method (which can use the exact dispersion relation
rather than a Taylor series), or by direct simulation of the full Maxwell's
equations rather than an approximate envelope equation.
In Gemology
In the technical terminology of gemology, dispersion is the difference in the
refractive index of a material at the B and G (686.7 nm and 430.8 nm) or C and F
(656.3 nm and 486.1 nm) Fraunhofer wavelengths, and is meant to express the
degree to which a prism cut from the gemstone demonstrates "fire". Fire is a
colloquial term used by gemologists to describe a gemstone's dispersive nature or
lack thereof. Dispersion is a material property. The amount of fire demonstrated by
a given gemstone is a function of the gemstone's facet angles, the polish quality,
the lighting environment, the material's refractive index, the saturation of color,
and the orientation of the viewer relative to the gemstone.
In Imaging
In photographic and microscopic lenses, dispersion causes chromatic aberration,
which causes the different colors in the image not to overlap properly. Various
techniques have been developed to counteract this, such as the use of achromats,
multi element lenses with glasses of different dispersion. They are constructed in
such a way that the chromatic aberrations of the different parts cancel out.
Pulsar Emissions
Pulsars are spinning neutron stars that emit pulses at very regular intervals ranging
from milliseconds to seconds. Astronomers believe that the pulses are emitted
simultaneously over a wide range of frequencies. However, as observed on Earth,
the components of each pulse emitted at higher radio frequencies arrive before
those emitted at lower frequencies. This dispersion occurs because of the ionized
component of the interstellar medium, mainly the free electrons, which make the
group velocity frequency dependent. The extra delay added at a frequency ν is:
and the dispersion measure (DM) is the column density of free electrons (total
electron content) — i.e. the number density of electrons ne (electrons/cm3)
integrated along the path traveled by the photon from the pulsar to the Earth — and
is given by
with units of parsecs per cubic centimetre (1 pc/cm3 = 30.857 × 1021 m−2).
Typically for astronomical observations, this delay cannot be measured directly,
since the emission time is unknown. What can be measured is the difference in
arrival times at two different frequencies. The delay Δt between a high
frequency νhi and a low frequency νlo component of a pulse will be
Reference: Wikipedia.org