Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/iii/paper-338/2/a/ii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 338 2 a ii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let be the optical telescope focal length, the physical optical slit width, the collimator focal length, and the incident collimated beam diameter. For the grating equation , differentiation at fixed wavelength gives . Thus the monochromatic optical slit image width isThe incident and emergent optical pupil widths are and . Multiplying cancels the anamorphic magnification of a grating:This is conservation of the Lagrange optical invariant in the dispersion plane. It uses paraxial optical slit angles, an unvignetted optical pupil and matching full-width conventions for .
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