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Diffraction gratings as replacement for beam splitters


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6 hours ago, Chris said:

Could defractors be made of crystals?

Hi Chris. Principally they are. The crystal lattice of atoms is working as a defraction grating itself. However the density if the grid is bound to the wavelength of the light. Because in a crystal the lattice is much "smaller" or "narrower" than in the defractor foil I showed in my video you would need "light" with a shorter wavelength to create the same defraction pattern with crystals. Therefore x-rays are used since they have much shorter wavelength. In fact x-ray diffraction patterns were used to analyze the crystalline structure of organic molecules like the DNA.

Another issue with crystals is that you only get good defraction patterns if the crystal has grown homogeneously. All naturally grown crystals are inhomogeneous because the crystallization process was suffering from various disturbances that are causing variations in density, enclosing of artifacts or different chemical components.

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