Calcite, the most common form of natural calcium carbonate (CaCO3), a widely distributed mineral known for the beautiful development and great variety of its crystals.
A wavefront is a surface over which an optical wave has a constant phase. For example, a wavefront could be the surface over which the wave has a maximum (the crest of a water wave, for example) or a minimum (the trough of the same wave) value. The shape of a wavefront is usually determined by the geometry of the source.
(Redirected from Wave optics) Physical optics is used to explain effects such as diffraction. In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics which studies interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric optics is not valid.