It’s relatively easy to understand how optical microscopes work at low magnifications: one lens magnifies an image, the next ...

When a laser beam is incident on a narrow opaque object such as a fine wire or a strand of hair, the resulting diffraction pattern is similar to the diffraction pattern of a slit of the same width as ...

When a laser beam is incident on many small objects such as lycopodium powder, the resulting diffraction pattern is similar to the diffraction pattern of a small circular aperture (Airy's disk pattern ...

What is the Diffraction Limit? The diffraction limit is a fundamental barrier in optical microscopy that sets the minimum size of features that can be resolved using conventional light microscopes. It ...

Using ultrahigh-intensity x-ray beams can cause the intensity of diffraction patterns from samples to drop Figure 1: An x-ray diffraction pattern obtained from a sample of Martian soil. X-ray ...