In the physics of wave propagation, a plane wave (also spelled planewave) is a constant-frequency wave whose wavefronts (surfaces of constant phase) are infinite parallel planes of constant peak-to-peak amplitude normal to the phase velocity vector.
It is not possible in practice to have a true plane wave; only a plane wave of infinite extent will propagate as a plane wave. However, many waves are approximately plane waves in a localized region of space. For example, a localized source such as an antenna produces a field that is approximately a plane wave far from the antenna in its far-field region. Similarly, if the length scales are much longer than the wave’s wavelength, as is often the case for light in the field of optics, one can treat the waves as light rays which correspond locally to plane waves.
Read more about Plane Wave: Mathematical Formalisms, Polarized Electromagnetic Plane Waves
Famous quotes containing the words plane and/or wave:
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)