Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-prelims-and-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/s3/2/3/solution

For a uniformly illuminated single slit of width , the far-field amplitude is proportional to , with . Its first zeros occur at . If the quoted peak width is the full width between those zeros, the small-angle geometry gives
The Fraunhofer diffraction approximation is appropriate since . If the supplied width instead meant a half-width or full width at half maximum, its numerical conversion factor would differ; the displayed answer states the first-zero convention explicitly.

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