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light in between the parallel mirrors !

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neptune

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hi guys and gals.

if i have a light beam which points at 2 mirrors which are held in parallel position, then reflection will take place in between them , which will make light beam bounce back and forth.

now if plot a graph of luminosity(y axis) vs time (x axis).
condition 1 light source off after some time.
condition 2 light source is always ON.

How would the graphas look like. doesnt matter time axis can be in femto seconds also.

i am guessing there will be exponential decay and rise for condition 1 and 2 respectively.

Thankyou.
 
Yes, it'd be an exponential decay, the sharpness and length of time which would be related to how perfect the mirror was, the distance between them. This doesn't account for possible interference if the beam reflects back through itself in which case you destructive interference to some degree.
 
ok thanx
 
I think from memory the light reflected from a mirror is only about 95%, similar to a white piece of paper or flat white paint.

So for every single reflection you would lose about 5% of the light.
 
5% but it's not perfectly exponential, eventually you will lose all of the light due to the quantum nature of photons; in a mathematically pure exponential decay you'll never lose everything, in the real world once you hit the boundary of quantization you'll see a linear (if not chaotic) influence that will eventually cause all of the photons to be absorbed.
 
ok this makes me ask another question here.

when a photon is absorbed by a material its electron absorbs the energy and jumps to higher state then after that what happens to that jumped e- ? does it remain there or goes back down ?

does mirror absorb all kinds of frequencies of photons ?
 
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