Light as waves

Figure8.3. Light propagation in thin fibres. Corpuscular approach (left) Internal total refiection. Interpretation of light as wave (right) propagation in form of modes. The evanescent wave penetrates the surrounding medium...

There has been phenomenal expansion in the range of experiments coimected with light-molecule interactions. If one thinks of light as an electromagnetic (EM) wave, like any wave it has an amplittide, a frequency and a phase. The advent of the laser in 1960 completely revolutionized the control over all tluee of hese factors. The amplittide of the EM wave is related to its intensity current laser capabilities allow... 

Figure C2.15.2. Right circularly polarized light. As tire wave propagates tire resultant E sweeps out a circle in tire x-y plane.

Scientists in the 1920s, speculating on this problem, became convinced that an entirely new approach was required to treat electrons in atoms and molecules. In 1924 a young French scientist, Louis de Broglie (1892-1987), in his doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne made a revolutionary suggestion. He reasoned that if light could show the behavior of particles (photons) as well as waves, then perhaps an electron, which Bohr had treated as a particle, could behave like a wave. In a few years, de Broglie s postulate was confirmed experimentally. This led to the development of a whole new discipline, first called wave mechanics, more commonly known today as quantum mechanics. 

Wave mechanics is based on the fundamental principle that electrons behave as waves (e.g., they can be diffracted) and that consequently a wave equation can be written for them, in the same sense that light waves, soimd waves, and so on, can be described by wave equations. The equation that serves as a mathematical model for electrons is known as the Schrodinger equation, which for a one-electron system is... 

The height of a wave is called its amplitude. The amplitude of a light wave measures the intensity of the light. As Figure JzA shows, a bright light is more intense than a dim one. 

The wave interpretation of the interference pattern observed in Young s experiment is inconsistent with the particle or photon concept of light as required by Einstein s explanation of the photoelectric effect. If the monochromatic beam of light consists of a stream of individual photons, then each photon presumably must pass through either slit A or slit B. To test this assertion, detectors are placed directly behind slits A and B and both slits are opened. The light beam used is of such low intensity that only one photon at a time is emitted by S. In this situation each photon is recorded by either one detector or the other, never by both at once. Half of the photons are observed to pass through slit A, half through slit B in random order. This result is consistent with particle behavior. 

Albert Einstein s 1905 work on the photoelectric effect paved the way for one of the greatest advances of twentieth-century science, the theory of quantum mechanics. Light had always been regarded as a wave. Quantum mechanics introduced the concept of light being transmitted in wave packets, or photons, that have particle-like qualities as well as wave-like qualities. 

Schrodinger s equation is widely known as a wave equation and the quantum formalism developed on the basis thereof is called wave mechanics. This terminology reflects historical developments in the theory of matter following various conjectures and experimental demonstration that matter and radiation alike, both exhibit wave-like and particle-like behaviour under appropriate conditions. The synthesis of quantum theory and a wave model was first achieved by De Broglie. By analogy with the dual character of light as revealed by the photoelectric effect and the incoherent Compton scattering... 

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