What is the frequency of light?
9426#20
An important aspect of light's nature is its frequency. The frequency of a wave is its rate of oscillation and is measured in hertz, the SI unit of frequency, where one hertz is equal to one oscillation per second. Light usually has multiple frequencies that sum to form the resultant wave. Different frequencies undergo different angles of refraction, a phenomenon known as dispersion.
Electromagnetic radiation
5778255#0
The Rabi frequency is the radian frequency of the Rabi cycle undergone for a given atomic transition in a given light field. This is thus the frequency of fluctuations in the populations of the two atomic levels involved in that atomic transition in that situation. It is proportional to the strength of the coupling between the light and the atomic transition and to the amplitude ("not" intensity) of the light's electric field. Rabi flopping between the levels of a 2-level system illuminated with light exactly resonant with the transition will occur at the Rabi frequency; when the incident light is detuned from resonance then this occurs at the generalized Rabi frequency. The Rabi frequency is a semiclassical concept as it is based on a quantum atomic transition and a classical light field.
Rabi frequency
14121#8
Radio frequency radiation is usually measured in kilohertz (kHz), megahertz (MHz), or gigahertz (GHz). Light is electromagnetic radiation that is even higher in frequency, and has frequencies in the range of tens (infrared) to thousands (ultraviolet) of terahertz. Electromagnetic radiation with frequencies in the low terahertz range (intermediate between those of the highest normally usable radio frequencies and long-wave infrared light) is often called terahertz radiation. Even higher frequencies exist, such as that of gamma rays, which can be measured in exahertz (EHz). (For historical reasons, the frequencies of light and higher frequency electromagnetic radiation are more commonly specified in terms of their wavelengths or photon energies: for a more detailed treatment of this and the above frequency ranges, see electromagnetic spectrum.)
Hertz
10779#13
Visible light is an electromagnetic wave, consisting of oscillating electric and magnetic fields traveling through space. The frequency of the wave determines its color: is red light, is violet light, and between these (in the range 4-) are all the other colors of the visible spectrum. An electromagnetic wave can have a frequency less than , but it will be invisible to the human eye; such waves are called infrared (IR) radiation. At even lower frequency, the wave is called a microwave, and at still lower frequencies it is called a radio wave. Likewise, an electromagnetic wave can have a frequency higher than , but it will be invisible to the human eye; such waves are called ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Even higher-frequency waves are called X-rays, and higher still are gamma rays.
Frequency
10779#10
An older method of measuring the frequency of rotating or vibrating objects is to use a stroboscope. This is an intense repetitively flashing light (strobe light) whose frequency can be adjusted with a calibrated timing circuit. The strobe light is pointed at the rotating object and the frequency adjusted up and down. When the frequency of the strobe equals the frequency of the rotating or vibrating object, the object completes one cycle of oscillation and returns to its original position between the flashes of light, so when illuminated by the strobe the object appears stationary. Then the frequency can be read from the calibrated readout on the stroboscope. A downside of this method is that an object rotating at an integral multiple of the strobing frequency will also appear stationary.
Frequency
7206727#19
Light and sound are similar in various ways. They both can be thought of in terms of waves, and they both come in quantum mechanical units. In the case of light we have photons while in sound we have phonons. Both sound and light can be produced as random collections of quanta (e.g. light emitted by a light bulb) or orderly waves that travel in a coordinated form (e.g. laser light). This parallelism implies that lasers should be as feasible with sound as they are with light. In the 21st century, it is easy to produce low frequency sound in the range that humans can hear (~20 kHz), in either a random or orderly form. However, at the terahertz frequencies in the regime of phonon laser applications, more difficulties arise. The problem stems from the fact that sound travels much slower than light. This means that the wavelength of sound is much shorter than light at a given frequency. Instead of resulting in orderly, coherent phonon laser structures that can produce terahertz sound, tend to emit phonons randomly. Researchers have overcome the problem of terahertz frequencies by following various approaches. Scientists in Caltech have overcome this problem by assembling a pair of microscopic cavities that only permit specific frequencies of phonons to be emitted. This system can be also tuned to emit phonons of different frequencies by changing the relative separation of the microcavities. On the other hand, the group from the University of Nottingham took a different approach. They have built their device out of electrons moving through a series of structures known as quantum wells. Briefly, as an electron hops from one quantum well to another neighbouring well it produces a phonon.
Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
27579471#2
More recently, researchers demonstrated that indoor lights such as fluorescent lights and incandescent bulbs vary their light intensity in accordance with the voltage supplied, which in turn depends on the voltage supply frequency. As a result, the light intensity can carry the frequency fluctuation information to the visual sensor recordings in a similar way as the electromagnetic waves from the power transmission lines carry the ENF information to audio sensing mechanisms. Based on this result, researchers demonstrated that visual track from still video taken in indoor lighting environments also contain ENF traces that can be extracted by estimating the frequency at which ENF will appear in a video as low sampling frequency of video (25–30 Hz) cause significant aliasing. It was also demonstrated in the same research that the ENF signatures from the visual stream and the ENF signature from the audio stream in a given video should match. As a result, the matching between the two signals can be used to determine if the audio and visual track were recorded together or superimposed later.
Electrical network frequency analysis
28736#49
Another way to measure the speed of light is to independently measure the frequency "f" and wavelength "λ" of an electromagnetic wave in vacuum. The value of "c" can then be found by using the relation "c" = "fλ". One option is to measure the resonance frequency of a cavity resonator. If the dimensions of the resonance cavity are also known, these can be used to determine the wavelength of the wave. In 1946, Louis Essen and A.C. Gordon-Smith established the frequency for a variety of normal modes of microwaves of a microwave cavity of precisely known dimensions. The dimensions were established to an accuracy of about ±0.8 μm using gauges calibrated by interferometry. As the wavelength of the modes was known from the geometry of the cavity and from electromagnetic theory, knowledge of the associated frequencies enabled a calculation of the speed of light.
Speed of light
3850488#7
A human perceives the intensity of the sinusoidal disturbance as the brightness of the light and the frequency as the color. If a light is turned on or off at a specific time or otherwise modulated, then the amplitude of the sinusoidal disturbance is also time-dependent. The time-varying amplitude does not propagate at the phase velocity but rather at the group velocity. The group velocity depends not only on the refractive index of the material, but also the way in which the refractive index changes with frequency (i.e. the derivative of refractive index with respect to frequency).
Slow light
48000586#4
The individual frequency components of the transmitted light are spatially separated using a simple spectrometer, usually a diffraction grating. In order to achieve a highly parallel measurement of the individual frequency components transmitted through the sample and out of the cavity, a CCD camera capable of operating in the spectral range of the laser light is used. In the case of the diffraction grating, the frequency components are separated in one spatial direction and focused into the CCD camera. In order to take advantage of the other spatial direction of the CCD, the light is scanned across the perpendicular direction of the CCD at the same time that the cavity length is scanned using an actuator. This produces a grid of peaks on the CCD image corresponding to a mode matching condition between the frequency comb and optical cavity.
Vernier spectroscopy