light, 

electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by the human eye.

Electromagnetic radiation occurs over an extremely wide range of wavelengths,
from gamma rays with wavelengths less than about 1 × 10−11 metre to radio
waves measured in metres. Within that broad spectrum the wavelengths visible to
humans occupy a very narrow band, from about 700 nanometres (nm; billionths of a
metre) for red light down to about 400 nm for violet light. The spectral
regions adjacent to the visible band are often referred to as light also, infrared at the one
end and ultraviolet at the other. The speed of light in a vacuum is a
fundamental physical constant, the currently accepted value of which is exactly
299,792,458 metres per second, or about 186,282 miles per second.

Sun
No single answer to the question “What is light?” satisfies the many contexts in which
light is experienced, explored, and exploited. The physicist is interested in the physical
properties of light, the artist in an aesthetic appreciation of the visual world. Through
the sense of sight, light is a primary tool for perceiving the world and communicating
within it. Light from the Sun warms the Earth, drives global weather patterns, and
initiates the life-sustaining process of photosynthesis. On the grandest scale, light’s
interactions with matter have helped shape the structure of the universe. Indeed, light
provides a window on the universe, from cosmological to atomic scales. Almost all of the
information about the rest of the universe reaches Earth in the form of electromagnetic
radiation. By interpreting that radiation, astronomers can glimpse the earliest epochs of
the universe, measure the general expansion of the universe, and determine the
chemical composition of stars and the interstellar medium. Just as the invention of
the telescope dramatically broadened exploration of the universe, so too the invention of
the microscope opened the intricate world of the cell. The analysis of the frequencies of
light emitted and absorbed by atoms was a principal impetus for the development
of quantum mechanics. Atomic and molecular spectroscopies continue to be primary
tools for probing the structure of matter, providing ultrasensitive tests of atomic and
molecular models and contributing to studies of fundamental photochemical reactions.

Light transmits spatial and temporal information. This property forms the basis of the
fields of optics and optical communications and a myriad of related technologies, both
mature and emerging. Technological applications based on the manipulations of light
include lasers, holography, and fibre-optic telecommunications systems.
In most everyday circumstances, the properties of light can be derived from the theory
of classical electromagnetism, in which light is described as
coupled electric and magnetic fields propagating through space as a traveling wave.
However, this wave theory, developed in the mid-19th century, is not sufficient to
explain the properties of light at very low intensities. At that level a quantum theory is
needed to explain the characteristics of light and to explain the interactions of light with
atoms and molecules. In its simplest form, quantum theory describes light as consisting
of discrete packets of energy, called photons. However, neither a classical wave model
nor a classical particle model correctly describes light; light has a dual nature that is
revealed only in quantum mechanics. This surprising wave-particle duality is shared by
all of the primary constituents of nature (e.g., electrons have both particle-like and
wavelike aspects). Since the mid-20th century, a more comprehensive theory of light,
known as quantum electrodynamics (QED), has been regarded by physicists as
complete. QED combines the ideas of classical electromagnetism, quantum mechanics,
and the special theory of relativity.

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This article focuses on the physical characteristics of light and the theoretical models
that describe the nature of light. Its major themes include introductions to the
fundamentals of geometrical optics, classical electromagnetic waves and the
interference effects associated with those waves, and the foundational ideas of the
quantum theory of light. More detailed and technical presentations of these topics can
be found in the articles optics, electromagnetic radiation, quantum mechanics,
and quantum electrodynamics. See also relativity for details of how contemplation of the
speed of light as measured in different reference frames was pivotal to the development
of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity in 1905.
Theories of light through history
Ray theories in the ancient world
Pythagoras
While there is clear evidence that simple optical instruments such as plane and
curved mirrors and convex lenses were used by a number of early civilizations, ancient
Greek philosophers are generally credited with the first formal speculations about the
nature of light. The conceptual hurdle of distinguishing the human perception of visual
effects from the physical nature of light hampered the development of theories of light.
Contemplation of the mechanism of vision dominated these early
studies. Pythagoras (c. 500 BCE) proposed that sight is caused by visual rays emanating
from the eye and striking objects, whereas Empedocles (c. 450 BCE) seems to have
developed a model of vision in which light was emitted both by objects and the
eye. Epicurus (c. 300 BCE) believed that light is emitted by sources other than the eye
and that vision is produced when light reflects off objects and enters the
eye. Euclid (c. 300 BCE), in his Optics, presented a law of reflection and discussed
the propagation of light rays in straight lines. Ptolemy (c. 100 CE) undertook one of the
first quantitative studies of the refraction of light as it passes from one transparent
medium to another, tabulating pairs of angles of incidence and transmission for
combinations of several media.
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Roger Bacon
With the decline of the Greco-Roman realm, scientific progress shifted to the Islamic
world. In particular, al-Maʾmūn, the seventh ʿAbbāsid caliph of Baghdad, founded the
House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) in 830 CE to translate, study, and improve upon
Hellenistic works of science and philosophy. Among the initial scholars were al-
Khwārizmī and al-Kindī. Known as the “philosopher of the Arabs,” al-Kindī extended
the concept of rectilinearly propagating light rays and discussed the mechanism of
vision. By 1000, the Pythagorean model of light had been abandoned, and a ray model,
containing the basic conceptual elements of what is now known as geometrical optics,
had emerged. In particular, Ibn al-Haytham (Latinized as Alhazen), in Kitab al-
manazir (c. 1038; “Optics”), correctly attributed vision to the passive reception of light
rays reflected from objects rather than an active emanation of light rays from the eyes.
He also studied the mathematical properties of the reflection of light from spherical and
parabolic mirrors and drew detailed pictures of the optical components of the human
eye. Ibn al-Haytham’s work was translated into Latin in the 13th century and was a
motivating influence on the Franciscan friar and natural philosopher Roger Bacon.
Bacon studied the propagation of light through simple lenses and is credited as one of
the first to have described the use of lenses to correct vision.

Early particle and wave theories

Galileo: telescope
With the dawn of the 17th century, significant progress was reawakened in
Europe. Compound microscopes were first constructed in the Netherlands between
1590 and 1608 (probably by Hans and Zacharias Jansen), and most sources credit
another Dutchman, Hans Lippershey, with the invention of the telescope in 1608. The
Italian astronomer Galileo quickly improved upon the design of the refracting
telescope and used it in his discoveries of the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn in
1610. (Refraction refers to the passage of light from one medium into another—in this
case, from air into a glass lens.) The German astronomer Johannes Kepler presented an
approximate mathematical analysis of the focusing properties of lenses
in Dioptrice (1611). An empirical advance was made by the Dutch
astronomer Willebrord Snell in 1621 with his discovery of the mathematical relation
(Snell’s law) between the angles of incidence and transmission for a light ray refracting
through an interface between two media. In 1657 the French mathematician Pierre de
Fermat presented an intriguing derivation of Snell’s law based on his principle of least
time, which asserted that light follows the path of minimum time in traveling from one
point to another. The posthumous publication of the Jesuit mathematician Francesco
Grimaldi’s studies in 1665 first described what are now called diffraction effects, in
which light passing an obstacle is seen to penetrate into the geometrical shadow. In 1676
the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer used his measurements of the changes in the
apparent orbital periods of the moons of Jupiter over the course of a year to deduce an
approximate value for the speed of light. The significance of Rømer’s work was the
realization that the speed of light is not infinite.

René Descartes
Seminal physical models of the nature of light were developed in parallel with the many
empirical discoveries of the 17th century. Two competing models of light, as a collection
of fast-moving particles and as a propagating wave, were advanced. In La
Dioptrique (1637), French philosopher-mathematician René Descartes described light
as a pressure wave transmitted at infinite speed through a pervasive elastic medium.
The prominent English physicist Robert Hooke studied diffraction effects and thin-film
interference and concluded in Micrographia (1665) that light is a rapid vibration of any
medium through which it propagates. In his Traité de la Lumière (1690; “Treatise on
Light”), the Dutch mathematician-astronomer Christiaan Huygens formulated the first
detailed wave theory of light, in the context of which he was also able to derive the laws
of reflection and refraction.

The most prominent advocate of a particle theory of light was Isaac

Newton. Newton’s careful investigations into the properties of light in the 1660s led to
his discovery that white light consists of a mixture of colours. He struggled with a
formulation of the nature of light, ultimately asserting in Opticks (1704) that light
consists of a stream of corpuscles, or particles. To reconcile his particle model with the
known law of refraction, Newton speculated that transparent objects (such as glass)
exert attractive forces on the particles, with the consequence that the speed of light in a
transparent medium is always greater than the speed of light in a vacuum. He also
postulated that particles of different colours of light have slightly different masses,
leading to different speeds in transparent media and hence different angles of
refraction. Newton presented his speculations in Opticks in the form of a series of
queries rather than as a set of postulates, possibly conveying an ambivalence regarding
the ultimate nature of light. Because of his immense authority in the
scientific community, there were few challenges to his particle model of light in the
century after his death in 1727.

Newton’s corpuscular model survived into the early years of the 19th century, at which
time evidence for the wave nature of light became overwhelming. Theoretical and
experimental work in the mid to late 19th century convincingly established light as
an electromagnetic wave, and the issue seemed to be resolved by 1900. With the arrival
of quantum mechanics in the early decades of the 20th century, however, the
controversy over the nature of light resurfaced. As will be seen in the following sections,
this scientific conflict between particle and wave models of light permeates the history of
the subject.
Geometrical optics: light as rays
A detailed understanding of the nature of light was not needed for the development,
beginning in the 1600s, of a practical science of optics and optical instrument design.
Rather, a set of empirical rules describing the behaviour of light as
it traverses transparent materials and reflects off smooth surfaces was adequate to
support practical advances in optics. Known collectively today as geometrical optics, the
rules constitute an extremely useful, though very approximate, model of light. Their
primary applications are the analysis of optical systems—cameras, microscopes,
telescopes—and the explanation of simple optical phenomena in nature.

Light rays
The basic element in geometrical optics is the light ray, a hypothetical construct that
indicates the direction of the propagation of light at any point in space. The origin of this
concept dates back to early speculations regarding the nature of light. By the 17th
century the Pythagorean notion of visual rays had long been abandoned, but the
observation that light travels in straight lines led naturally to the development of the ray
concept. It is easy to imagine representing a narrow beam of light by a collection of
parallel arrows—a bundle of rays. As the beam of light moves from one medium to
another, reflects off surfaces, disperses, or comes to a focus, the bundle of rays traces the
beam’s progress in a simple geometrical manner.

Geometrical optics consists of a set of rules that determine the paths followed by light
rays. In any uniform medium the rays travel in straight lines. The light emitted by a
small localized source is represented by a collection of rays pointing radially outward
from an idealized “point source.” A collection of parallel rays is used to represent light
flowing with uniform intensity through space; examples include the light from a
distant star and the light from a laser. The formation of a sharp shadow when an object
is illuminated by a parallel beam of light is easily explained by tracing the paths of the
rays that are not blocked by the object.