Next: The Michelson Interferometer Up: Waves in One Dimension Previous: Beats Contents
An interferometer is a device which splits a beam of light into two sub-beams, shifts the phase of one sub-beam with respect to the other, and then superimposes the sub-beams so that they interfere constructively or destructively, depending on the magnitude of the phase shift between them. In this section we study the Michelson interferometer and interferometric effects in thin films.