Energy flow lines and the spot of Poisson-Arago

Michel Gondran (1) , Alexandre Gondran (2)

1 LAMSADE - Laboratoire d'analyse et modélisation de systèmes pour l'aide à la décision
2 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile

We show how energy flow lines answer the question about diffraction phenomena posed in 1818 by the French Academy: "Deduce by mathematical induction the movements of the rays during their crossing near the bodies." The use of energy flow lines provides a complementary answer to Fresnel's wave theory of light. A numerical simulation of the energy flow lines shows that they can reach the bright spot of Poisson-Arago in the shadow center of a circular opaque disk. For a monochromatic wave in vacuum, these energy flow lines correspond to the diffracted rays of Newton's Opticks.

Mots clés: Fresnel diffraction; physics education; stochastic processes

Domaines: Mathématiques [math]; Optimisation et contrôle [math.OC]

Michel Gondran, Alexandre Gondran. Energy flow lines and the spot of Poisson-Arago. American Journal of Physics, 2010, 78 (6), pp 598-602. ⟨10.1119/1.3291215⟩. ⟨hal-00934546⟩