Interference or not: analysis of Young’s experiment for a single-cycle pulse

Abstract

An analysis of Young’s interference experiment for single cycle pulses showing the time evolution of the interference pattern due to two square apertures is obtained in the Fresnel regime. The fact that the diffraction pattern from each aperture is not constant in time has consequences on the interference pattern. We have also analyzed the changes in the spectrum at different regions at the observation plane. This position-dependent spectrum results in frequency beating of the interference pattern for the case of two apertures.

Keywords

• ultrafast phenomena
• scalar diffraction
• interference