The angle of incidence, in geometric optics, is the angle between a ray incident on a surface and the line perpendicular (at 90 degree angle) to the surface at the point of incidence, called the normal. The ray can be formed by any waves, such as optical, acoustic, microwave, and X-ray. In the figure below, the line representing a ray makes an angle θ with the normal (dotted line). The angle of incidence at which light is first totally internally reflected is known as the critical angle. The angle of reflection and angle of refraction are other angles related to beams.
In computer graphics and geography, the angle of incidence is also known as the illumination angle of a surface with a light source, such as the Earth's surface and the Sun. It can also be equivalently described as the angle between the tangent plane of the surface and another plane at right angles to the light rays. This means that the illumination angle of a certain point on Earth's surface is 0° if the Sun is precisely overhead and that it is 90° at sunset or sunrise.
Determining the angle of reflection with respect to a planar surface is trivial, but the computation for almost any other surface is significantly more difficult.
When dealing with a beam that is nearly parallel to a surface, it is sometimes more useful to refer to the angle between the beam and the surface tangent, rather than that between the beam and the surface normal. The 90-degree complement to the angle of incidence is called the grazing angle or glancing angle. Incidence at small grazing angles is called "grazing incidence."
Grazing incidence diffraction is used in X-ray spectroscopy and atom optics, where significant reflection can be achieved only at small values of the grazing angle. Ridged mirrors are designed to reflect atoms coming at a small grazing angle. This angle is usually measured in milliradians. In optics, there is Lloyd's mirror.
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L'optique est un vieux domaine qui touche à beaucoup de sujets modernes, des techniques expérimentales aux applications courantes. Ce premier cours traite plusieurs aspects de base de l'optique: propa
In describing reflection and refraction in optics, the plane of incidence (also called the incidence plane or the meridional plane) is the plane which contains the surface normal and the propagation vector of the incoming radiation. (In wave optics, the latter is the k-vector, or wavevector, of the incoming wave.) When reflection is specular, as it is for a mirror or other shiny surface, the reflected ray also lies in the plane of incidence; when refraction also occurs, the refracted ray lies in the same plane.
Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between two different media so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated. Common examples include the reflection of light, sound and water waves. The law of reflection says that for specular reflection (for example at a mirror) the angle at which the wave is incident on the surface equals the angle at which it is reflected. In acoustics, reflection causes echoes and is used in sonar. In geology, it is important in the study of seismic waves.
In optics, a ray is an idealized geometrical model of light or other electromagnetic radiation, obtained by choosing a curve that is perpendicular to the wavefronts of the actual light, and that points in the direction of energy flow. 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. This allows even very complex optical systems to be analyzed mathematically or simulated by computer.
We propose a framework that connects the spatial symmetries of a metasurface to its material parameter tensors and its scattering matrix. This provides a simple and universal way to effortlessly determine the properties of a metasurface scattering response ...
Coherent field propagation is an essential computational tool in optics with applications ranging from computational optics and optical design to iterative field reconstructions. An improvement in the computational speed of current propagation methods is t ...
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The Berry curvature dipole (BCD) is a key parameter that describes the geometric nature of energy bands in solids. It defines the dipole-like distribution of Berry curvature in the band structure and plays a key role in emergent nonlinear phenomena. The th ...