Optics - Electromagnets

[steve_bank]

Bringing it over from a philosophy thread.

I used geometric optics which treats light like rays, common knowledge. But that is an approximation.

Geometric optics.

Reflection Summary – The Physics Hypertextbook

Light travels in straight lines with relatively little diffraction. When light is reflected, the angle of reflection is the same as the angle of incidence.

physics.info

Physical optics solves Maxwell;s Equations. Not practical without computers. CED computational electrodynamics.

3D simulation of a propagation light wave model.

Electromagnetic radiation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

https://bme.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/917/2023/09/Pedrotti-LS_Basic-Physical-Optics_Fundamentals-of-Photonics_2008.pdf

CED. A specialized field that models EM radiation interacting with structures like a cell phone. It enabled cell phone size minimization.

https://engineering.purdue.edu/wcchew/ece604f19/Lecture%20Notes/Lect36.pdf

Quantum Optics, above my pay grade. How photons interact with a material during reflection.

Quantum optics is the study of quantized light (photons) and its interaction with matter. The advancement of quantum optics theory and experiments enabled remarkably precise tests of fundamental questions in physics, as well as applications ranging from lasers to quantum computing.

Quantum reflection - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Quantum reflection is a uniquely quantum phenomenon in which an object, such as a neutron or a small molecule, reflects smoothly and in a wavelike fashion from a much larger surface, such as a pool of mercury. A classically behaving neutron or molecule will strike the same surface much like a thrown ball, hitting only at one atomic-scale location where it is either absorbed or scattered. Quantum reflection provides a powerful experimental demonstration of particle-wave duality, since it is the extended quantum wave packet of the particle, rather than the particle itself, that reflects from the larger surface. It is similar to reflection high-energy electron diffraction, where electrons reflect and diffraction from surfaces,[1][2] and grazing incidence atom scattering,[3][4] where the fact that atoms (and ions) can also be waves is used to diffract from surfaces.