Diffraction :

Refresh

Prof. S. Habraken

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 Diffraction phenomenon

• A diffraction phenomenon is encountered when a portion of

wavefront interacts with an obstacle, which modifies phase and
amplitudes (obviously direction, as well)
• The wavefront portions that propagate can superimpose ➔ give
rise to interferences: the resulting pattern is called diffraction
pattern

Diffraction is a specific example of

interference and nothing else!

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 Huygens’ Principle
•Each sampled point of a wavefront becomes a
secondary source producing spherical wavelets.
The propagating wavefront is the envelope of the
wavelets

•If the wave propagates at a frequency ν with a

velocity v, the wavelets exhibit the same.

•Alone, this principle cannot explain the

diffraction phenomenon

•The envelope is a too simple approach

• based on intensity summation,

• neglecting the superimposition of phased wavelets

! neglecting the interference phenomenon!

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 Huygens-Fresnel Principle

Fresnel brings the corrective approach:

•The amplitude of the envelope is the optics field

resulting from the superimposition of every
wavelets taking into account their amplitude and
phase ➔ multiple interferences !

•Very complex for a arbitrary problem but

sometimes very easy!

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 Fraunhofer approximation of diffraction

Fraunhofer regime condition:

Valid when incident waves can be
approximated as plane waves when
reaching the obstacle
AND emerging waves can be
approximated as plane waves when
reaching the detection area
True with large distances (>100m)

• Practical setup:
Lenses that produce infinite source and
infinite screen (see drawing)
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 Fresnel approximation of diffraction
Fresnel regime condition:

• Source or screen are too close to the obstacle

! wavefront curvatures can no more be neglected

Diffraction pattern:
The image of the obstacle is still present with a complex fringe
pattern: computation is not straightforward!
Fraunhofer approximates Fresnel for far field only.

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 Examples
The Fraunhofer diffraction pattern is
calculated thanks to a Fourier transform
of the diffractive obstacle/aperture

Diffraction by a slit Diffraction by two slits

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Other Fraunhofer diffraction pattern

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The circular aperture
The diffraction pattern resulting from a circular aperture is called
Airy disks or rings

In imaging devices, the image of a point is not a point but a

diffraction pattern. This is due to the fact that the aperture
collects only a portion of the wavefront emitted by the source
➔loss of information (low frequency bandpass filter)
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 The circular aperture
The resolution power of a perfect imaging system is always diffraction-limited.
Since most of the optical systems use a circular aperture, the resolution criterion
is based on that geometry: the Rayleigh’s criterion.

Two sources remain resolved until the first diffraction pattern null of the first
source coincide with the diffraction pattern maximum of the second source

The resolution limit is

defined by

Δθ > 1.22 λ/D

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