Sitting in our introduction class to waves and optics, we were thinking to ourselves that we were frustrated that light effects such as interference and diffraction happen at a scale that we have no experience with in real life. With this project, we take you down to the micrometer and femtosecond scale, so that you can get an intuitive understanding of the strange ways in which light works.

This was done by approximating the wave equation and using it to update a small section of space, getting all of these beautiful effects for cheap by being true to the real physics describing light.

Using parallel computing and hardware acceleration on the GPU, we were able to do this in real time with impressive quality.

GALLERY

Water Caustics

Diffraction Around a Ball

Light Bouncing Around a Scene with a Trapezoid of Glass in the Center

Reflection Within a Koch Snowflake Fractal

Diffraction Through a Single Slit

Interference Between two Slits

Light Focusing from a Parabolic Mirror