[Danack (Dan Ackroyd)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

I tried looking up the exact definition for wavefront on google and got a bunch of definitions that use the word but not define it.

When talking about light how you want to think about it really depends on what you're trying to do.

You're talking about 'wavefront errors' - which is a slightly unusual phrase - in what context are you talking about?

is it the waves of errors like ripples on a pond on a surface? Wavefront errors being the deviation away from a perfectly smooth curve to the tops of these ripples?

Light can be thought of as a wave - but no 'wavefront errors' wouldn't be any distortion in these waves - the only thing that I would imagine from 'wavefront errors' is the wavefronts getting out of phase e.g. Normally people only care about 'wavefront errors' if you've got a coherent light source and are trying to do something like a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment


Hmm.

I just googled for wavefront errors and the first result is: http://www.telescope-optics.net/aberrations.htm

It's late and it's been a few years since I did physics in school but this terminology seems odd. I'm pretty sure that type of 'wavefront error' is more commonly known as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_confusion
but that's just a guess as to the context of what you're trying to understand.