Wave interference: where does the energy go?

Posted on April 7, 2010 by skullsinthestars Last week was a relatively lousy one for me, but it was made up in part by getting a good question from a student on waves and interferen e after lass! "t#s really ni e to get a question that indi ates a genuine interest in the s ien e $as opposed to %ust wanting an answer to homework&, and " thought "#d dis uss the question and its answer as a post! 'he situation in question is as follows( suppose you have a harmoni wave on a string traveling to the right su h that in a snapshot of time, the string looks as follows(

'his wave arries energy, and there is a net flow of energy to the right! )ow suppose we e* ite the string with an additional wave of the same frequen y and amplitude, but ompletely out of phase! 'he sum of the two waves then vanishes(

'he two waves an el ea h other out, leaving a ompletely unmoving string due to destru tive interferen e! +y student asked me( what happens to the energy, As posed, it seems that we started with two waves arrying energy, but they an eled ea h other out, leaving no energy- 'his interpretation annot possibly be orre t, so where is the flaw in our des ription, 'here are a tually two aspe ts to the answer that " want to address, ea h of whi h is rather important in the understanding of wave phenomena! 'he first of these is the observation that the answer to the question depends on how the waves were generated in the first pla e-

Let us formulate the problem as follows( one wave is generated far away on the left of the string, perhaps by a hand shaking it up and down! 'he se ond wave is generated lo ally at a point on the string by some sort of applied for e(

"ndividually, the first wave is propagating entirely to the right. the se ond wave spreads out in both dire tions from the point of appli ation! /hat does the situation look like when both waves are applied to the string at the same time, /e have(

'here is omplete destru tive interferen e to the right of the se ond e* itation! Looking at the pi ture, though, the a tual physi al result of our two e* itations is that the first wave, propagating to the right, is refle ted ba k to the left'he proper interpretation is that the se ond e* itation in the enter of the string a tually adds no energy to the string at all- "n fa t, the se ond e* itation on the string %ust blo ks and refle ts the first wave! 'here is no 0energy an ellation1 involved! /aves in a one2dimensional problem like a vibrating string are a bit of a spe ial ase. however, a similar argument an be made for higher2dimensional problems! "n general, we an say that the interferen e of waves doesn#t 0 an el1 energy, it just moves it somewhere else! 'he perfe t illustration of this is 3oung#s double slit e*periment, whi h " have dis ussed before(

Light emanating from the two slits in the s reen A produ es an interferen e pattern on the measurement s reen 4, a simulation of whi h is shown below(

'he presen e of interferen e means that more light shows up in some pla es and less light shows up in other pla es! "t an be shown, however, using some straightforward mathemati s, that the total light olle ted on the measurement s reen 4 is equal to the total light that passes through the two holes( interferen e affe ts where the light goes, but not how mu h of it there is in total! 'his observation 5 that interferen e redire ts light, and doesn#t an el it 5 a tually plays a role in the operation of ompa t dis players! 'he data on a ompa t dis is en oded in a series of 6pits# surrounded by 6land#, whi h orrespond to a #07 or #17 bit! 'he dis is read by fo using light onto the surfa e, and measuring the amount of light refle ted ba k, as rudely illustrated below(

Light from a laser passes through a beam splitter and is fo used by a lens onto the dis ! Part of the ba k2refle ted light gets dire ted by the splitter to the dete tor, and the absen e or presen e of light at the dete tor registers as a #17 bit or #07 bit! 'he modulation of light is aused by interferen e! Light illuminating 6land# gets dire tly refle ted and olle ted at the dete tor! /hen a 6pit# is present, however, the fo used beam partly refle ts from land and partly from pit! "f the pit is taken to be a quarter2wavelength in depth, then the light refle ted from the pit is half2a2wavelength out of phase with the light from the land, resulting in destru tive interferen e and less light at the dete tor(

4ut, as noted, the light doesn#t get 0 an eled1 ompletely. it %ust goes somewhere else! /here does it go, "t gets diffra ted into a dire tion where the lens annot dete t it $ olor oded for larity&(

'o summari8e, these are the two thoughts " had when the student asked me his question( $1& one needs to onsider all sour es of waves when trying to interpret wave interferen e phenomena, and $2& in general, wave interferen e results in a hange in where light goes! 9ven with this in mind, it is easy to ome up with ir umstan es that an really hallenge one#s understanding of interferen e! :or instan e, let us return to our waves on a string, and onsider interferen e between waves generated by two lo al e* itations(

/hat do we make of this situation, /e have two e* itations, os illating in syn but with a half2wavelength separating them! 'here is destru tive interferen e of the waves on either side of the two e* itations, and the string vibrates up and down between the two e* itations! ;u h a strange string vibration is now known as a nonpropagating excitation, and the first resear h on su h effe ts was done by my ollaborators and "<- )onpropagating e* itations are a tually one2dimensional analogues of the radiationless 0invisible1 ob%e ts that " have dis ussed previously $here and here, for instan e&!

" still haven#t ome up with a great way to e*plain what is going on here! Let us imagine that we start applying our e* itations with the string at rest! 9nergy goes into generating the nonpropagating e* itation and some transient waves that propagate away after a short period of time! /hen the transients are gone, however, no more energy is added to the system! =ust like the ase dis ussed at the beginning of the post, e* itation 2 serves only to refle t waves traveling from the left, and e* itation 1 serves only to refle t waves traveling from the right! 'he two sour es are playing a sort of 0wave ping2pong1, kno king the waves ba k and forth between them- 4eyond that odd statement, it is diffi ult to des ribe the e*a t origin of the waves without spe ifying the physi al me hanism used to e* ite the string! ;o, there#s no disappearan e of energy in wave interferen e, but that doesn#t mean that interferen e isn#t a really weird phenomenon<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< < +y first paper on the sub%e t is +! 4erry, =!'! :oley, >! >bur and 9! /olf, 0)onpropagating string e* itations1, Am! =! Phys! ??$2& $1@@A&, 121! "t is one of my favorite papers be ause of the weirdness and elegan e of the sub%e t, and also be ause it is probably the only time "#ll have two world2renowned brilliant physi ists 5 9mil /olf and +i hael 4erry 5 as oauthors on the same paper! 'he nonpropagating e* itation des ribed in the paper is more ompli ated than the two point sour e ase des ribed here. that e*ample was suggested by 4! Benardo, 0A simple e*planation of simple nonradiating sour es in one dimension,1 Am! =! Phys! ?? $11& $1@@A&, 1020!