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spaced evenly, then all the intensities would indeed be equal. But, as a matter
of fact, although we have taken the simplest case, we could also have considered
an array of øœ#rs of antennas, in which each member of the pair has a certain
strength and some relative phase. In this case, it is possible to get intensities
which are diferent in the diferent orders. A grating is often made with little
“sawtooth” cuts instead of little symmetrical notches. By carefully arranging the,
“sawteeth,” more light may be sent into one particular order of spectrum than
Into the others. In a practical grating, we would like to have as mụch light as
possible in one of the orders. This may seem a complicated point to bring in,
but it is a very clever thing to do, because it makes the grating more useful.
So far, we have taken the case where all the phases of the sources are equal.
But we also have a formula for ô when the phases difer from one to the nex$
by an angle œ. 'Phat requires wiring up our antennas with a slight phase shift
between each one. Can we do that with light? Yes, we can do it very easily,
for suppose that there were a source of light at infnity, œ an angle such that
the light is coming in at an angle địn, and let us say that we wish to discuss the
scattered beam, which is leaving at an angle Øẹu¿ (Fig. 30-4). The Ø¿u¿ is the
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đsin sụt đsin Ôn
Fig. 30-4. The path difference for rays scattered from adjacent rulings
of a grating Is đsin đụ: — đsin Ôịn.
same Ø as we have had before, but the Ø¡ạ is merely a means for arranging that
the phase of each source is diferent: the light coming from the distant driving
source first hits one scratch, then the next, then the next, and so on, with a phase
shift rom one to the other, which, as we see, is œ = —2dsinØ¡„/À. Therefore
we have the formula for a grating in which light both comes in and goes out at
an angle:
@ = 2#dsin Øsu¿/À — 2xdsin Øịn /À. (30.7)
Let us try to fñnd out where we get strong intensity in these cireumstances. The
condition for strong intensities 1s, of course, that ø should be a multiple of 2z.
'There are several interesting points to be noted.
One case of rather great interest ¡is that which corresponds to m = 0, where
đ is less than À; in fact, this is the only solution. In this case we see that
sin Øsụy = sinØ¡n, which means that the light comes out in the sœmne điccfion as
the light which was exciting the grating. We might think that the light “goes
right through.” No, it 1s đjƒeren# light that we are talking about. The light that
goes right through is from the original source; what we are talking about is the
new light uhách ¡s generated bụ scaltering. It turns out that the scattered light
1s going in the same direction as the original light, in fact it can interfere with
it—a feature which we will study later.
There is another solution for this same case. For a given Øịn, Øou„¿ may be
the supplemen# oŸ Ø¡n. 5o not only do we get a beam in the same direction as
the incoming beam but also one in another direction, which, if we consider 1E
carefully, is such that the angle oƒ ïncidence ¡s equal to the angle oƒ scattering.
'This we call the refected beam.
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So we begin to understand the basic machinery of reflection: the light that
comes in generates motions of the atoms in the refector, and the refector then
regeneraftes a. n„eu œue, and one of the solutions for the direction of scattering,
the on solution if the spacing of the scatterers is small compared with one
wavelength, is that the angle at which the light comes out is equal to the angle
at which it comes inl
Next, we discuss the special case when đ —> 0. 'PThat is, we have just a solid
plece of material, so to speak, but of Ññnite length. In addition, we want the phase
shift from one scatterer to the next to go to zero. In other words, we put more
and more antennas between the other ones, so that each of the phase differences
1s getting smaller, but the number of antennas is increasing in such a way that
the total phase diference, between one end of the line and the other, is constant.
Let us see what happens to (30.3) iƒ we keep the diference in phase nộ from one
end to the other constant (say nó = ®), letting the number go to infnity and
the phase shift ý of each one go to zero. But now ở is so small that sin ộ = ở,
and if we also recognize n2fo as T„, the maximum intensity at the center of the
beam, we find
T= 4l2sin? ›®/8Ẻ. (30.8)
This limiting case is what is shown in EFig. 30-2.
In such cireumstances we fnd the same general kind of a picture as for ñnite
spacing with đ > À; all the side lobes are practically the same as before, but
there are no higher-order maxima. lf the scatterers are all in phase, we get a
mmaximum in the direction Øs„y = 0, and a minimum when the distance A is equal
to À, just as for finite đ and nø. 5o we can even analyze a con#nuous distribution
Of scatterers or oscillators, by using integrals instead of summing.
L † ——
! =E=—ˆ——— †}——”
Fig. 30-5. The intensity pattern of a continuous line of oscillators has
a single strong maxImum and many weak “side lobes.”
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As an example, suppose there were a long line of oscillators, with the charge
oscillating along the direction of the line (Eig. 30-5). Erom such an array the
greatest intensity is perpendicular to the line. 'There is a little bit of intensity up
and down from the equatorial plane, but it is very slipht. With this result, we can
handle a more complicated situation. Suppose we have a set of such lines, each
producing a beam only in a plane perpendicular to the line. To find the intensity
in various directions from a series of long wires, Instead of infinitesimal wires,
1s the same problem as it was for infñnitesimal wires, so long as we are in the
central plane perpendicular to the wires; we just add the contribution from each
of the long wires. hat is why, although we actually analyzed only tiny antennas,
we might as well have used a grating with long, narrow slots. Each of the long
slots produces an efect only in its own direction, not up and down, but they are
all set next to each other horizontally, so they produce interference that way.
Thus we can build up more complicated situations by having various distri-
butions of scatterers in lines, planes, or in space. The first thing we did was to
consider scatterers in a line, and we have just extended the analysis to strips; we
can work it out by just doïng the necessary summations, adding the contributions
from the individual scatterers. The principle is always the same.
30-3 Resolving power of a grating
W© are now in a position to understand a number of interesting phenomena.
For example, consider the use oŸ a grating for separating wavelengths. We noticed
that the whole spectrum was spread out on the screen, so a grating can be used
as an instrument for separating light into its diferent wavelengths. One of the
interesting questions is: supposing that there were t©wo sources of slightly diferent