WOLFRAM|DEMONSTRATIONS PROJECT

Talbot Carpet

​
a
0.508
H
2.49
λ
632.8
m
10
δ
0.004
Diffraction from a phase grating that produces a sinusoidal wavefront can result in what is known as a Talbot carpet, discovered experimentally in 1836. The fractal pattern shows repeated images of itself at multiples of a fixed distance
z
T
(the so-called Talbot distance). The same behavior has been detected in experiments in atomic and quantum physics.