ABSTRACT
The wave nature of electromagnetic radiation provides a basis to describe a medium in which transverse waves propagate and from which the phenomena of interference, diffraction and polarisation can be derived from Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory of light in 1880 (Ditchburn (1952) and Jenkins and White (1951)). The basic equations of physical optics are derived from the differential form of the Maxwell equations and will be used here (Carlson (1977), Kline and Kay (1965), Lipson and Lipson (1969), Stratton (1941) and Tatarski (1961)).
