Re: Wave Cancellation



Cecil Moore wrote:

If the two canceled waves
don't affect each other, why do their combined
energy components appear later at the non-standard
output? What reversed their momentum at the standard
output?

Hi Cecil -

An interferometer uses partially reflective mirrors. Assuming perfectly flat mirrors, perfectly collimated, monochromatic, coherent light that is normal to the surface, when the separation between mirrors is an integer number of half wavelengths of that light, light is canceled in the reverse direction, and all the light from the illuminating source (less losses) passes through the mirrors. Some of that light passes directly through them, and the rest passes through after multiple internal reflections.

The two books that I have purchased on this subject are "Fabry-Perot Interferometers", by G. Hernandez and "The Fabry-Perot Interferometer" by JM Vaughan. Both of the texts are well in excess of 300 pages, so any explanation one might give here would lack significant detail. There's nothing in them about waves causing other waves to do things. The books do however describe in great detail how interferometers do things to waves.

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