Monday, June 8, 2009

Ray, Wave, and Beam Optics

I spent this afternoon reading through some of Saleh's "Fundamentals of Photonics" text in preparation to the lab work I will soon be doing. I made it through (skimming most of it) the first three chapters, which dealt with ray optics (chapter 1), wave optics (chapter 2), and beam optics (chapter three). I personally found chapters 2 and 3 most useful in answering pre-existing questions that I had.

In chapter 2, I made special note of the Fourier analysis which allows us to expand an arbitrary function of time to a superposition of harmonic functions dependent on frequency. This superposition is characteristic of frequency (as already noted), amplitude, and phase. I also found very useful the temporal, spatial, and spectral sketches of a pulsed wave.

I found especially helpful in chapter 3 the discussion of Gaussian beams, as I am under the impression that our THz beam is of this nature. Things to look into more from here include Gouy effect and Laguerre-Gaussian beams.

Though there is not necessarily a lot for me to write about today, I feel as though taking the time to read over some very basic optical principles and more importantly some material I had not yet been exposed to really helped a lot today. The text seems very accessible and extremely comprehensive.

The goal for tomorrow will be to read a little more about the Gouy effect and Laguerre-Gaussian beams, re-read articles from last week, and meet with Dr. Gallot or Antoine to see if I am headed in the right direction.

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