Diffraction Grating
Diffraction Grating
Diffraction Grating
Figure illustrates how light travels to a distant viewing screen from each of
ve slits in a grating and forms the central bright fringe and the rst-order bright
fringes on either side. Higher-order bright fringes are also formed but are not shown
in the drawing. Each bright fringe is located by an angle
fringe. These bright fringes are sometimes called the principal fringes or principal
maxima, since they are places where the light intensity is a maximum. The term
principal distinguishes them from other, much less bright, fringes that are referred
to as secondary fringes or secondary maxima.
Constructive interference creates the principal fringes. To show how, we
assume the screen is far from the grating, so that the rays remain nearly parallel
while the light travels toward the screen. In reaching the place on the screen where
a rst-order maximum is located, light from slit 2 travels a distance of one
wavelength farther than light from slit 1, as in Figure. Similarly, light from slit 3
travels one Wavelength farther than light from slit 2 and so forth, as emphasized by
the four colored right triangles on the right hand side of the drawing. For the rstorder maximum, the blow-up view of slits 1 and 2 shows that constructive
second-order maximum forms when the extra distance traveled by light from
d sin=m
Where m is an integer having possible values 0,
1,
2,
3 etc.
Since the condition locating the fringes depends on the wavelength of the
light, different wavelengths will appear at different points on the screen for a given
order m. Thus passing light through a diffraction grating will spread the light into its
spectrum of colors. A good grating produces a wider separation of colors than a
prism and also allows direct computation of the wavelength from the condition for
interference.
When a grating containing hundreds or thousands of slits is illuminated by a
beam of parallel rays of monochromatic light, the pattern is a series of very sharp
lines at different angles. If the grating is illuminated by white light with a continuous
distribution of wavelengths, each value of m corresponds to a continuous
spectrum in the pattern. The angle for each wavelength is determined by above
equation. For a given value of m, long wavelengths (the red end of the spectrum) lie
at larger angles (that is, are deviated more from the straight-ahead direction) than
do the shorter wavelengths at the violet end of the spectrum.
As Eq. shows, the sines of the deviation angles of the maxima are
proportional to the ratio
. Gratings for
from 400 to 700 nm) usually have about 1000 slits per
millimeter; the value of d is the reciprocal of the number of slits per unit length, so
d is of the order of
1
1000 mm = 1000 nm.
between adjacent ridges or grooves, the reflected angles at which intensity maxima
occur are given by above Eq.
with a uniform radial spacing of 0.74 m =740 nm. Information is coded on the
DVD by varying the length of the pits. The reflection-grating aspect of the disc is
merely an aesthetic side benet.
Diffraction involves the interference of light waves coming from different
parts of the same opening. Diffraction from a single slit produces a bright central
fringe with a series of weaker dark and light fringes on either side of the broader
central fringe. A circular aperture produces a bull's-eye pattern. Making the
aperture smaller causes the diffraction pattern to spread out, frustrating efforts to
narrow a beam of light. A diffraction grating is a multiple slit interference device
that allows us to separate and measure wavelengths of light.
Diffraction gratings are key components of monochromators used, for
example, in optical imaging of particular wavelengths from biological or medical
samples. A diffraction grating can be chosen to specically analyze a wavelength
emitted by molecules in diseased cells in a biopsy sample or to help excite strategic
molecules in the sample with a selected frequency of light. Another vital use is in
optical ber technologies where bers are designed to provide optimum
performance at specic wavelengths. A range of diffraction gratings are available
for selecting specic wavelengths for such use.