Technical Details
The irradiance of a monochromatic light wave in matter is given in terms of its electric field by
- ,
where E is the complex amplitude of the wave's electric field, n is the refractive index of the medium, is the speed of light in vacuum, and ϵ0 is the vacuum permittivity. (This formula assumes that the magnetic susceptibility is negligible, i.e. where is the magnetic permeability of the light transmitting media. This assumption is typically valid in transparent media in the optical frequency range.)
Irradiance is also the time average of the component of the Poynting vector perpendicular to the surface.
Read more about this topic: Irradiance
Famous quotes containing the words technical and/or details:
“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (19041967)
“Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request. One must seem to hear the unreasonable demands of the petulant, unmoved, and the tedious details of the dull, untired. That is the least price that a man must pay for a high station.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)