Oh, Newton did not know this!
Light-matter interaction
The light interaction with the matter was one of the main questions that are worthy to study throughout the history of science.
The term light-matter interaction comprises a wide range of physical phenomena from classical physics to quantum electrodynamics or from black holes to nanophotonics.
The term interaction is used to imply that light and matter are different entities that may affect one another via some intermediary.
Transmission, scattering, reflection, and absorption are considered the main interactions between light and matter.
In 1672, Isaac Newton’s prism experiment remind the importance of the reflection of light and caught the attention of the light-matter interaction.
He did not only explore the nature of light but also observed the presence of evanescent waves via the famous prism experiment even though he was not able to realize it at that time.
How?
In the experiment, the incident light was tried to send through the two identical prisms. While the lights mostly reflected from the first prism, the only way to observe the passage of the light through these two identical prisms was possible within a few tens of nanometers.
At that time, he was not able to explain the existence of near-field but this experiment has become a model to understand the propagation of the evanescent waves. Since the non-propagating evanescent waves stay at the interface of the first prism, the collected non-propagating evanescent waves can be transformed to the propagating evanescent wave by placing the second prism a few tens of nanometers vicinity of the surface.
What has changed with this observation?
Many years later of his observation, the existence of near-field region brought another dimension to light-matter interaction, especially for the materials in nanosize ranges. Newton’s experiment must have lit a fire under the mind of great scientists for the possibility of imaging beyond the diffraction limit of light!
Thank you, Isaac Newton!
