The Verifications of No Bright and Dark Fringes In a Standing-wave

TL;DR

This paper challenges the traditional view by experimentally and theoretically verifying that no bright or dark fringes exist in a standing-wave light field, emphasizing interference-energy-flux density over electric-field energy-density.

Contribution

It introduces an inclination factor to the interference formula and confirms that interference fringes are absent in standing-wave fields, revising the fundamental understanding of optical interference.

Findings

Bright and dark fringes do not exist in a standing-wave field.

Interference-energy-flux density, not electric-field energy-density, is fundamental.

Corrected formulas show zero intensity for bright fringes in standing-waves.

Abstract

After Wiener's experiment, it had been widely accepted that only electric-field was the fundamental-factor for optical interference and believed that there were alternating bright and dark fringes in a light standing-wave field which was formed by a pair of parallel light-beams traveling in mutually opposite directions. While being supplied to the bright fringes, the light-energy from the beams must pass across the dark fringes or across the electric-field nodes, so that the electric-field would not keep zero at the nodes. However, it was inconsistent with the characteristic of electric-field nodes at which the electric-field was zero anytime. Therefore, this naturally led to a presumption that there were no bright and dark interference-fringes in a standing-wave field, which was consistent with zero of the electromagnetic energy-flux-density in a standing-wave field. In this paper, it was fully verified from several aspects, including an ideal experiment, comparing a standing-wave with an LC circuit, a group of experiments and theoretical deductions of formulas. An inclination factor was introduced into the previous common formula of two-beams-interference to rectify it back to the original meaning of its initial definition by energy-flux-density rather than electric-field energy-density. Given the angle between the two-beams to be 180 degrees as a validation, it was verified by the corrected formula that the light-intensities of the bright interference-fringes in a standing-wave were equal to zero. i.e., no interference-fringes existed in a standing-wave field.Thus, instead of electric-field energy-density alone from Wiener's conclusions, interference-energy-flux density was the fundamental-factor to form interference-fringes. The magnetic-field vector acts the same role as the electric-field vector on light interacting with substance.