page_title: Dispersion (optics)
hierarchical_section_title: Dispersion (optics)
caption_attribution_description: English: Light dispersion of a 12 Volt compact fluorescent lamp seen through a amici direct-vision prism Deutsch: Die Dispersion von Licht einer 12 Volt Kompaktleuchtstofflampe gesehen durch ein Geradsichtprisma nach Amici
context_page_description: In optics, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency.
  Media having this common property may be termed dispersive media. Sometimes the term chromatic dispersion is used for specificity.
  Although the term is used in the field of optics to describe light and other electromagnetic waves, dispersion in the same sense can apply to any sort of wave motion such as acoustic dispersion in the case of sound and seismic waves, in gravity waves, and for telecommunication signals along transmission lines or optical fiber.
  In optics, one important and familiar consequence of dispersion is the change in the angle of refraction of different colors of light, as seen in the spectrum produced by a dispersive prism and in chromatic aberration of lenses. Design of compound achromatic lenses, in which chromatic aberration is largely cancelled, uses a quantification of a glass's dispersion given by its Abbe number V, where lower Abbe numbers correspond to greater dispersion over the visible spectrum.
context_section_description: In optics, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency.
  Media having this common property may be termed dispersive media. Sometimes the term chromatic dispersion is used for specificity.
  Although the term is used in the field of optics to describe light and other electromagnetic waves, dispersion in the same sense can apply to any sort of wave motion such as acoustic dispersion in the case of sound and seismic waves, in gravity waves (ocean waves), and for telecommunication signals along transmission lines (such as coaxial cable) or optical fiber.
  In optics, one important and familiar consequence of dispersion is the change in the angle of refraction of different colors of light, as seen in the spectrum produced by a dispersive prism and in chromatic aberration of lenses. Design of compound achromatic lenses, in which chromatic aberration is largely cancelled, uses a quantification of a glass's dispersion given by its Abbe number V, where lower Abbe numbers correspond to greater dispersion over the visible spectrum. In some applications such as telecommunications, the absolute phase of a wave is often not important but only the propagation of wave packets or "pulses"; in that case one is interested only in variations of group velocity with frequency, so-called group-velocity dispersion.
caption: A compact fluorescent lamp seen through an Amici prism
exif: {"Image Software": "Created with opensource tool Qtpfsgui, http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net", "Image Artist": "D-Kuru/Wikimedia Commons", "Image Copyright": "Released under CC-BY-SA-3.0-AT(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/at/). See URL for more information", "Image ExifOffset": "2392", "Image XPTitle": "[76, 0, 105, 0, 103, 0, 104, 0, 116, 0, 32, 0, 100, 0, 105, 0, 115, 0, 112, 0, ... ]", "Image XPComment": "[84, 0, 104, 0, 101, 0, 32, 0, 108, 0, 105, 0, 103, 0, 104, 0, 116, 0, 32, 0, ... ]", "Image XPAuthor": "D-Kuru/Wikimedia Commons", "Image XPSubject": "[84, 0, 104, 0, 101, 0, 32, 0, 108, 0, 105, 0, 103, 0, 104, 0, 116, 0, 32, 0, ... ]", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}