Observation of the Talbot effect with water waves

Abstract

When light is incident upon a diffraction grating, images of the grating appear at periodic intervals behind the grating. This phenomenon and the associated self-imaging distance were named after Talbot, who first observed them in the nineteenth century. A century later, this effect held new surprises with the discovery of sub-images at regular fractional distances of the Talbot length. In this paper, we show that water waves enable one to observe the Talbot effect in a classroom experiment. Quantitative measurements, of for example the Talbot distances, can be performed with an easy-to-use digital Schlieren method.