What Is The Minimum Value That The Index Of Refraction Can Have?

What Is the Minimum Value That the Index of Refraction Can Have?

Answer:

The vacuum is the lowest refractive index. The minimum refractive index is 1.0000 in air. less than 1 there cannot be the refractive index.

Refractive index:

Refractive index is defined as the ratio of the velocity of light in a vacuum to the velocity of light in a specific medium is called refractive index. It measures the bending when a ray of light passes from one medium to another medium. It is represented as “n”. The Refractive index depends on the following factors.

• Density
• Temperature
• Light wavelength

It tells at which speed light travels in a medium. When the refractive index increases it decreases the speed of light in the medium. These are inversely related to each other. The bending of light in a medium is described by Snell’s law in which angels of incidence and refraction are equal. The amount of light reflected and critical angle for total internal reflection is also described by the refractive indices.

Speed and wavelength are the factors of refractive index so speed and wavelength are reduced to vacuum values. Air (vacuum) refractive index is 1 so it is presumed that wave frequency is not related to the refractive index.

The Refractive index is affected by wavelength. Every light has a specific wavelength when white light is split it gives colors on refraction is called dispersion. This is commonly observed in rainbows, prisms, and in achromatic aberration lenses. Refractive index changes with the wavelength of most materials by several percent.

Applications:

The Refractive index is very important in itself it has various applications nowadays.

• It is used from x-ray to radio.
• Electromagnetic spectrum
• It is also applied to phenomena of sound like a wave. Instead of the speed of light, the speed of sound is used and other than vacuum reference medium is chosen.