Wednesday, September 23, 2015

optics - Diffraction and k-space


Regarding diffraction I am a little bit lost reading about reciprocal space and the space of k's. As I understand it the Fourier relationship between a wavepacket Ψ(r,t) and the complex weighting factors of each constituent plane wave A(k) is given by: Ψ(r,t)=12πA(k)ei(krωt)dk demonstrating a sort of linear superposition of reflected plane waves from a diffraction grating (or crystal lattice).Further by Parseval's theorem the intensity of this reflected packet is given by: |Ψ(r,t)|2dr=|A(k)|2dk



However I am not really sure how this relates to the other sort of understanding of k space. That is to say the space that can give us meaningful information about crystal lattices and unit cells. Are they the same spaces?


Would this mean therefore that the intensity/position of the diffraction spots can be related to the structure of the solid's lattice. If so how can we understand distributions in terms of the Fourier relationship above?


I understand there have been several questions so far regarding the reciprocal k-space however so far I have not found anything that helps me particularly grasp this aspect of diffraction.


As you can see I am quiet confused in this matter and would greatly appreciate some help!




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