Light field diffraction

The phase relationship between the incident light field and the resulting surface deformation is crucial in understanding the mechanism of grating formation (Fig. 4.4). Early investigations using the diffraction of an edge (Kumar et al.. 

Baldwin, K. G., Hajnal, J. V., and Fisk, P. T. H. (1990). Optics for neutral atomic beams a reflection and diffraction of sodium atoms by evanescent laser light fields. Journal of Modern Optics, 37, 1839-1848. 

Transmission electron microscopy is able to identify the orientation of molecules within thin films of those thermotropic polymers which are sufficiently resistant to the necessary intense electron beam. The high resolution possible in TEM enables fine scale structures to be characterized which are invisible in a light microscope. Diffraction data can be recorded from the same area as bright and dark field images. However it must be recognised that the requirement for thin specimens can produce structures not necessarily typical of the bulk, particularly since surface interactions may be of importance. 

The holographic method is a relatively new imaging technique developed about three decades ago. Since then, this method has been used in the study of airborne and liquid-borne particulate systems in their real world environments [21]. In a holographic experiment, images are formed in a two-step process. In the first step, a collimated coherent light is used to illuminate the sample. A hologram is formed by the far-field diffraction patterns of all the particles in the... 

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