14 - Young's experiment in signal synthesis

Abstract

This chapter discusses young's experiment in signal synthesis. Young's double-slit experiment is a cornerstone in the development of physical optics and quantum physics. The basic idea of generating interference patterns of wavefields, by using a rather simple setup, has been usefully exploited in several applications. The chapter describes that a narrow slit in a Fourier transformer can be applied to generated ID aberrated wave fronts with continuously variable aberration coefficient. It describes the purpose to modify the previous result for achieving a parallel display of several members of a family of special functions. The chapter also discusses the use of two narrow slits in an optical processor, for generating complex amplitudes. Moreover, the possibility of employing wide slits with variable borders and the previous results in the context of optical processors are also discussed in the chapter. Finally, the chapter extends the previous results to polar coordinates with the purpose of synthesizing signals along the optical axis.