Talbot effect
Efecto Talbot
- Date
- 1836 · confidence high
- Place
- Lacock, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- William Henry Fox Talbot (1836)
- Field
- Communication
What was discovered
Diffraction effect in which the image of a periodic grating illuminated by a plane wave repeats at regular distances (the Talbot length), including a half-period-shifted version at half that distance.
What it led to
- lensless Talbot lithography
- generation of periodic patterns in precision optics
- applications in interferometry and wavefront sensors
- quantum and photonic imaging techniques