The Talbot effect is a diffraction effect first observed in 1836 by Henry Fox Talbot. When a plane wave is incident upon a periodic diffraction grating, the image of the grating is repeated at regular distances away from the grating plane. The regular distance is called the Talbot length, and the repeated images are called self images or Talbot images. Furthermore, at half the Talbot length, a self-image also occurs, but phase-shifted by half a period. At smaller regular fractions of the Talbot length, sub-images can also be observed. At one quarter of the Talbot length, the self-image is halved in size, and appears with half the period of the grating. At one eighth of the Talbot length, the period and size of the images is halved again, and so forth creating a fractal pattern of sub images with ever-decreasing size, often referred to as a Talbot carpet. Talbot cavities are used for coherent beam combination of laser sets.
Calculation of the Talbot length
showed that the Talbot effect was a natural consequence of Fresnel diffraction and that the Talbot length can be found by the following formula: where is the period of the diffraction grating and is the wavelength of the light incident on the grating. However, if wavelength is comparable to grating period, this expression may lead to errors in up to 100%. In this case the exact expression derived by Lord Rayleigh should be used:
The atomic Talbot effect
Due to the quantum mechanicalwave nature of particles, diffraction effects have also been observed with atoms—effects which are similar to those in the case of light. Chapman et al. carried out an experiment in which a collimated beam of sodiumatoms was passed through two diffraction gratings to observe the Talbot effect and measure the Talbot length. The beam had a mean velocity of corresponding to a de Broglie wavelength of =. Their experiment was performed with 200 and gratings which yielded Talbot lengths of 4.7 and respectively. This showed that for an atomic beam of constant velocity, by using, the atomic Talbot length can be found in the same manner.
Nonlinear Talbot effect
The nonlinear Talbot effect results from self-imaging of the generated periodic intensity pattern at the output surface of the periodically poled LiTaO3 crystal. Both integer and fractional nonlinear Talbot effects were investigated. In cubic nonlinear Schrödinger's equation, nonlinear Talbot effect of rogue waves is observed numerically.
