Wednesday, June 14, 2017

optics - Fully destructive interference


I'm aware that this is somewhat of a frequently asked question (not only here), and i've dug through respective answer for a few hours before i decided to ask here. None of those answers helped me predict/explain my case though, so here's my problem:


Suppose we have this setup: sketch
A laser source on the left, two semi-transparent mirrors (grey) and two normal mirrors (black). The red lines designate the laser path. The bottom arm introduces a phase difference of half the wavelength to the respective beam (integer multiples of $\lambda/2$ could be added to the vertical distance without affecting the setup).


From what i understand, the dotted lines should both exhibit destructive interference (assuming the semi-transparent mirrors both reflect and let pass exactly 50% of the light).


To the question(s): I'm aware that energy conservation should still be at work, but i simply cannot figure out where the energy ends up. Assuming that full interference actually happens, it would either suggest that no work is being done in the laser source (how/why?) or that the energy is going somewhere else (where?). And if the beams don't actually cancel each other out, i'd like an explanation as to why.





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