The simulator renders the near-field intensity pattern behind a coherent light source passing through a periodic diffraction grating, showing how the grating's image sharpens, blurs, shifts, and doubles in frequency as propagation distance increases, and it builds up the full two-dimensional Talbot carpet in real time.
Set the grating period and the wavelength of the illuminating light, then scan the propagation distance slider to watch the intensity pattern evolve. Jump directly to the calculated Talbot length to see the sharp self-image reappear, check the half-Talbot-length point to see the shifted repeat, and check the quarter-Talbot-length point to see the frequency-doubled sub-image. Toggle the Talbot carpet view to see the full distance-versus-position map at once.
Grating period slider, wavelength slider, propagation distance slider with quick-jump buttons for the Talbot length and its key fractions, and a toggle to switch between a single-distance intensity profile view and the full Talbot carpet map.
The same self-imaging trick that Henry Fox Talbot noticed with sunlight and a grating in 1836 is now used inside modern hospital-grade X-ray scanners, where a Talbot-Lau grating interferometer extracts phase-contrast detail from soft tissue that a standard absorption X-ray would show as nearly featureless.
The simulator renders the near-field intensity pattern behind a coherent light source passing through a periodic diffraction grating, showing how the grating's image sharpens, blurs, shifts, and doubles in frequency as propagation distance increases, and it builds up the full two-dimensional Talbot carpet in real time.
The simulator renders the near-field intensity pattern behind a coherent light source passing through a periodic diffraction grating, showing how the grating's image sharpens, blurs, shifts, and doubles in frequency as propagation distance increases, and it builds up the full two-dimensional Talbot carpet in real time.
Set the grating period and the wavelength of the illuminating light, then scan the propagation distance slider to watch the intensity pattern evolve. Jump directly to the calculated Talbot length to see the sharp self-image reappear, check the half-Talbot-length point to see the shifted repeat, and check the quarter-Talbot-length point to see the frequency-doubled sub-image. Toggle the Talbot carpet view to see the full distance-versus-position map at once.
The same self-imaging trick that Henry Fox Talbot noticed with sunlight and a grating in 1836 is now used inside modern hospital-grade X-ray scanners, where a Talbot-Lau grating interferometer extracts phase-contrast detail from soft tissue that a standard absorption X-ray would show as nearly featureless.