DIFFRACTION

Diffraction occurs when a wave encounters an obstacle or a slit. In classical physics, the
diffraction phenomenon is described as:
• The apparent bending of waves around small obstacles, and
• The spreading out of waves past small openings.

These characteristic behaviors are exhibited when a wave encounters an obstacle or a slit that is
comparable in size to its wavelength. Diffraction occurs with all waves, including sound waves,
water waves, and electromagnetic waves such as visible light, X-rays and radio waves.

Difference between interference and diffraction?

There is no specific, important physical difference between them:

• When there are only a few sources, say two, we call it interference, as in Young's slits;
• But with a large number of sources, the process is labelled diffraction.
• In diffraction, the interfering beams originate from a continuous distribution of sources;
• In interference, the interfering beams originate from discrete number of sources.

Huygens–Fresnel principle:

Diffraction effects are a consequence of the wave character of light.

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Huygens: Every point of a given wavefront of light can be considered a source of secondary
spherical wavelets, and the sum of these secondary waves determines the form of
the wave at any subsequent time.

Fresnel: He added the assumption that the actual field at any point beyond the wavefront is
a superposition of all the wavelets, taking into account both their amplitudes and
phase.

Fraunhofer Diffraction

In Fraunhofer diffraction, the wavefront of light reaching slit must be plane: i.e. place the source
of light at the focal point of a convex lens.

The screen is also assumed to be at infinity: can be achieved by using a lens on exit side. The
light reaching screen is due to parallel rays of light from different portions of wavelets at the slit.
According the Huygens-Fresnel principle, spherical wavelets start from each point of the
wavefront at the slit, and the resultant at the screen will be obtained by the superposition
principle.

Single slit diffraction

• We shall consider narrow (but finite width) slits, rather than round holes (wavefronts that
are formed by the slit are cyllindical rather than spherical).
• If light passes through narrow, point like hole, almost exact spherical wave forms.
However if the hole has a finite size, an interference pattern forms behind the hole

We shall compute the distribution of the intensity at the screen beyond the slit:

• The pattern near the slit, where exact wavefront profiles are important are called near-
field, or Fresnel, diffraction.
• The pattern at the screen far away, where we can use geometrical optics rays and
approximations used in interference studies is called far-field, or Fraunhofer
diffraction

We shall consider exclusively the far-field, Fraunhofer, diffraction pattern.

When coherent light of monochromatic wavelength is incident upon a slit, the light diverges as it
passes through the slit in a process known as diffraction.

If the light then falls on a screen placed at a large distance from the slit (at infinity), it produces a
pattern of alternating bright and dark images of the slit.

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This pattern is referred to as a Fraunhofer diffraction pattern, which is the simplest case of
diffraction. It occurs when rays emerging from the slit can be considered to be parallel.

Single slit diffraction pattern:

The diffraction process is explained by Huygens’ principle:- the fact that different portions of the
slit behave as if they were separate sources of light waves. At each point on the screen, the light
from the different portions of the slit will have a different phase due to the different path length
of light from each portion of the slit to the point on the screen.

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Visualising:

If light from symmetric elements near each edge of the slit travels to the centerline of the slit, as
indicated by rays 1 and 2 above, their light arrives in phase and experiences constructive
interference. Light from other element pairs symmetric to the centerline also arrive in phase.

The first minimum in intensity for the light through a single slit can be visualized in terms of
rays 3 and 4. Light from these two elements arrive s180° out of phase (suffer destructive
interference). Additional pairs of identical spacing which progress downward across the slit will
give destructive interference for all those pairs and therefore an overall minimum in light
intensity.

One of the characteristics of single slit diffraction is that a narrower slit will give a wider
diffraction pattern as illustrated below.

There is no simple expression for the location of the maxima on the screen other than that for the
principal maximum at the central of the pattern.

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From the diagram:
sin  =
  + 

The theory of diffraction predicts that the spatial pattern of light intensity on the viewing screen
by a light wave passing through a single rectangular-shaped slit is given by:

 sin  
sin   sin 
 =   =   
 sin  
λ

λ
where I0 is the light intensity at θ=0 and the quantities in parentheses are in radians.

sin 
lim    = 1
→ 

Otherwise the zeros of the expression occur when sin  = 0, i.e. when

1
=  sin  = !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! = ±1, ±2, ….
2
The irradiance I versus & ' ()* + ,λ- is plotted below.

Setting  = 2,λ, the condition for the zeros of the irradiance is:

λ =  sin ! !!!!!!!! = ±1, ±2, ….

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Using small angle approximations:  ≅ sin . Hence on the screen, the irradiance is maximum
at θ = 0 (y = 0), and drops to zero at values of ym such that:

/ ≅
λ

The irradiance pattern is symmetrical about y = 0.

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DOUBLE-SLIT DIFFRACTION:

The diffraction pattern is obtained in a similar way to that of the single-slit.

The calculations, which are not shown here, indicate that the irradiance is just a product of the
irradiances for double-slit interference and single-slit diffraction.

Recall the irradiance in Young’s double-slit interference:

4 ∆ 7 sin 
= 4  cos  3 5 = 4  cos  3 5 = 4  cos  3 5 = 4  cos  8
2 λ λ
And the single-slit diffraction expression:

 sin  
sin   sin 
 =   =  
 sin  

λ

The irradiance at (point P on the screen) in the double-slit diffraction pattern is given by:

sin 
= 4     cos  8

where,

7 sin  7 sin 
cos  8 = cos    = cos    , !!!!!!!!!!!7! → 9:;<!9=>?<;@A!
2 λ

and,

 sin 
= ,!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! → 9:;<!B;7<ℎ
λ
Zeros are when:

 = ±, ±2, ±3, … . ; !!!A7!!!!8 = ± ,2, ! ± 3 ,2, ! ± 5,2, …

Intensity maxima:

8 = ±, ±2, ±3, … . ; !!9; ;:?!<@:!!7 sin  = λ!

NB:
• Term interference will be used for those cases in which a modification of the amplitude
is determined by the superposition of a finite number of beams (or wavelets).

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 • Term diffraction is used for those cases in which the amplitude is determined by the
integration over the infinitesimal elements of the wavefront.

Interference and diffraction functions plotted:

Comparison of the intensity for the single- and double-slit is shown below:

We can see in this figure that the maximum intensities of the interference fringes follow the
curve for diffraction on a single-slit.

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 Single-slit pattern: Double-slit pattern:

Problems:

1. A parallel beam of monochromatic light falls normally on a screen containing two

parallel slits each of width 0.1 mm and 0.8 mm distance between centres. Which
Fraunhofer diffraction orders are missing?

2. A screen with two slits with adjustable width is illuminated at normal incidence with
monochromatic light. The centres of the slits are separated by 0.5 mm. A convex
lens with a focal length of 1 m is positioned behind the screen. Another screen is
placed in the focal plane of the lens and is used for imaging the diffraction pattern
produced by the slits. (i) One of the slits is blocked. The other is opened to 50
micron. Find the full width of the central intensity maximum in the diffraction pattern
obtained in the focal plane of the lens if the slit is illuminated with light having
wavelength λ=500 nm. (ii) Calculate how the width of the central intensity maximum
will change if the second slit, also opened to 50 micron, is unblocked. (iii) Which
interference orders are clearly observed if the width of both slits is increased to
100 micron? Illustrate your answer with a graph depicting the intensity of the
diffracted light in the focal plane of the lens.

3. In the intensity distribution of light diffracted by two slits calculate the full width at half
maximum (FWHM) of the interference fringe.

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The Diffraction Grating

A diffraction grating has a large number of parallel slits, all with the same width and
spaced equal distances apart. Only four slits are shown in the figure below but a typical
diffraction grating has thousands of narrow apertures.

Consider a typical grating having 500 lines mm-1. The situation can be analysed in the
same way as Young’s two slit experiment.

Suppose the angle θ is happens to be such that distance b – c is λ, then waves from
slits a and b will interfere constructively at a point in a direction θ to the normal.

If b – c is λ, then d – e will be 2λ, f – g will be 3λ, and so on. Therefore, waves from
hundreds of slits will interfere constructively, producing a well defined maximum of the
diffraction pattern, called a diffraction image. Other maxima will occur when b – c = 2λ,
3λ, etc.

The width of the apertures is only 1/500 mm so the fringe spacing is much wider than in
Young’s experiment which means that the angles θ are not small angles. Therefore, to
find the angular positions of the maxima, we use the equation:

7 sin  = λ

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where m (= 1, 2, 3 etc) is now called the order of the image of the diffraction pattern.
This is the diffraction grating equation, and is similar to the one for the two-slit
interference.

When the grating is illuminated with monochromatic light, the pattern is a series of at
angles determined by the diffraction grating equation. If, on the other hand, the grating
is illuminated with white light, each value of m corresponds to a continuous spectrum in
the pattern.

The equation shows that sin  ∝ λ,7 . Hence for substantial deviation to occur, the
grating spacing, d, should be of the same order of magnitude as the wavelength λ.

Gratings for use in visible spectrum usually have 500 to 1500 lines per mm, so d is of
the order of 1000 nm. [Visible spectrum lies between 400 – 700 nm.]

As the number N of slits increases, the brightness of the principal maxima increases as
N2. Grating with many slits produce brighter and narrower principal maxima.

Comparison of grating with prism:

• The diffraction grating is widely used in spectrometry as a means of dispersing
light. If the grating spacing is known, we can measure the angles of deviation
used and compute the wavelength. Whereas a prism can also disperse light,
there is no simple relation to determine the wavelength.
• Prism deviates red light the least and violet the most, while the grating does the
opposite.

Examples:

(i) Find the angular width of the first-order visible spectrum produced by a plane
grating with 6000 lines per cm when white light falls normally on the grating.
[Visible spectrum lies between 400 – 700 nm.]

Solution:

Grating spacing, d, for first-order spectrum (m = 1):

1
7= = 1.67 × 10NO !
6000!:;A=9/K

Angular deviation of the violet light:

400 × 10NP
sin  = = 0.240!!!! ⇒ !!! = 13.9°
1.67 × 10NO

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Angular deviation for red:

700 × 10NP
sin  = = 0.419!!!! ⇒ !!! = 24.8°
1.67 × 10NO

Hence first-order visible spectrum includes: 24.8° − 13.9° = 10.9°

(ii) Show that the violet end of the third-order spectrum (above) overlaps the red end
of the second-order spectrum.

Solution:

Third-order deviation (m = 3) is:

3 × 400 × 10NP 1200 × 10NP

sin  = = !!!
7 7

Second-order deviation (m = 2) is:

2 × 700 × 10NP 1400 × 10NP

sin  = = !!!
7 7

This shows that no matter what the grating spacing d is, the largest angle (at the red
end) for the second-order spectrum is always greater than the smallest angle (at the
violet end) for the third-order spectrum, so the second and third orders always overlap.

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