Definition: | a wave which occurs in a medium when an incident wave propagating in this medium encounters one or more obstacles possibly with limiting openings, and which is not interpretable by geometrical optics
NOTE 1 – A diffracted wave may exist in regions which are not reached by the incident wave or by reflected or refracted waves.
NOTE 2 – Certain waves propagating in the vicinity of a surface, such as surface wave, leaky wave, lateral wave, are not generally considered as diffracted waves, in spite of the fact that they are not interpretable by geometrical optics.
NOTE 3 – The diffracted wave can be studied by using approximate methods, having similarities with geometrical optics, such as the geometrical theory of diffraction.
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