can we conclude fromtheinerference pattern that light has a transverse or longitudinalnature??? IF YES,den how cn we conclude it??

Dear student,

Longitudinal waves are waves that have the same direction of vibration along their direction of travel, which means that the vibration of the medium (particle) is in the same direction or opposite direction as the motion of the wave. Mechanical longitudinal waves have been also referred to as compressional waves or compression waves.

A transverse wave is a moving wave that consists of oscillations occurring perpendicular to the direction of energy transfer. If a transverse wave is moving in the positive x-direction, its oscillations are in up and down directions that lie in the y–z plane.

Ray theory does not describe phenomena such as interference and diffraction, which require wave theory (involving the phase of the wave). You can think of a ray of light , in optics,as an idealized narrow beam of electromagnetic radiation. Rays are used to model the propagation of light through an optical system, by dividing the real light field up into discrete rays that can be computationally propagated through the system by the techniques of ray tracing. A light ray is a line or curve that is perpendicular to the light's wavefronts (and is therefore collinear with the wave vector). Light rays bend at the interface between two dissimilar media and may be curved in a medium in which the refractive index changes. Geometric optics describes how rays propagate through an optical system.

This two-dimensional nature should not be confused with the two components of an electromagnetic wave, the electric and magnetic field components, which are shown in the electromagnetic wave diagram here. The light wave diagram shows linear polarization. Each of these fields, the electric and the magnetic, exhibits two-dimensional transverse wave behavior, just like the waves on a string.

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