Huygens' principle

Article By:

Jenkins, Francis A. Formerly, Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California.

Watson, William W. Formerly, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Last reviewed:August 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.326000

An assumption regarding the behavior of light waves, originally proposed by C. Huygens in the seventeenth century to explain the fact that light travels in straight lines and casts sharp shadows. Large-scale waves, such as sound waves or water waves, bend appreciably into the shadow. The special behavior of light may be explained by Huygens' principle, which states that “each point on a wavefront may be regarded as a source of secondary waves, and the position of the wavefront at a later time is determined by the envelope of these secondary waves at that time.” Thus a wave WW originating at S is shown in illus.a at the instant it passes through an aperture. If a large number of circular secondary waves, originating at various points on WW, are drawn with the radius r representing the distance the wave would travel in time t, the envelope of these secondary waves is the heavily drawn circular arc W ′W ′. This represents the wave after t. If, as Huygens' principle requires, the disturbance is confined to the envelope, it will be 0 outside the limits indicated by points W′.

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