Two luminous point sources separated by a certain distance are at $10 \, km$ from an observer. If the aperture of his eye is $2.5 \times 10^{-3}\,m$ and the wavelength of light used is $500 \, nm$, the distance of separation between the point sources are just seen to be resolved is
According to Rayleigh's criterion,
$\theta=\frac{1.22 \lambda}{d_{e}}$
where $\lambda=$ wavelength of light, $d_{e}=$ diameter of the pupil of the eye
$\therefore \theta=\frac{1.22 \times 500 \times 10^{-9}}{2.5 \times 10^{-3}}=2.44 \times 10^{-4} $radian
But $\,\,\,\theta=\frac{a}{D}$
Distance of separation,
$a=D \times \theta =10 \times 10^{3} \times 2.44 \times 10^{-4} $$=2.44 \,m$
Wave optics are also known as Physical optics which deal with the study of various phenomena such as polarization, interference, diffraction, and other occurrences where ray approximation of geometric optics cannot be done. Thus, the section of optics that deals with the behavior of light and its wave characteristics is known to be wave optics.
In wave optics, the approximation is carried out by utilizing ray optics for the estimation of the field on a surface. Further, it includes integrating a ray-estimated field over a mirror, lens, or aperture for the calculation of the transmitted or scattered field.
Wave optics stands as a witness to a famous standoff between two great scientific communities who devoted their lives to understanding the nature of light. Overall, one supports the particle nature of light; the other supports the wave nature.
Sir Isaac Newton stood as a pre-eminent figure that supported the voice of particle nature of light, he proposed a corpuscular theory which states that “light consists of extremely light and tiny particles, called corpuscles which travel with very high speeds from the source of light to create a sensation of vision by reflecting on the retina of the eye”.
