Lectures on Physics has been derived from Benjamin Crowell's Light and Matter series of free introductory textbooks on physics. See the editorial for more information....

The correspondence principle

Let's also consider how the equations for double-slit diffraction relate to the correspondence principle. When the ratio λ/d is very small, we should recover the case of simple ray optics. Now if λ/ d is small, sin θ must be small as well, and the spacing between the diffraction fringes will be small as well. Although we have not proven it, the central fringe is always the brightest, and the fringes get dimmer and dimmer as we go farther from it. For small values of λ/d, the part of the diffraction pattern that is bright enough to be detectable covers only a small range of angles. This is exactly what we would expect from ray optics: the rays passing through the two slits would remain parallel, and would continue moving in the θ=0 direction. (In fact there would be images of the two separate slits on the screen, but our analysis was all in terms of angles, so we should not expect it to address the issue of whether there is structure within a set of rays that are all traveling in the θ=0 direction.)




Last Update: 2010-11-11