Diffractive Nanophotonics and Advanced Information Technologies

摘要

Wave diffraction (Latin diffractus means fractured, broken, and obstacle avoidance by waves) is a phenomenon that manifests itself as a departure from the laws of geometrical optics under wave propagation. The common property of all diffraction effects is the dependence of the degree of its manifestation on the relation between the wavelength and the characteristic dimension of medium inhomogeneities. Diffraction was first described in 1673 by the Scottish mathematician J. Gregory, who studied the dispersion of white light into a spectrum using a feather.