Visible electromagnetic radiation in the eye

Ramón F Alvarez-Estrada¹ and Maria L Calvo^2
1Department of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Physical Sciences,
Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
²Department of Optics, Faculty of Physical Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Dedicated to Prof Jay M Enoch

This contribution, dedicated to honor Jay M Enoch, will give a short and rather limited overview of some of his very important research achievements in vision, trying to pay due appreciation to them and, in so doing, to be informative and pedagogical. Visible electromagnetic radiation processed by eye optical-neural system provides the basis for visual transduction into physiological activity. Enoch is responsible for important contributions, in collaboration with other researchers, to the Stiles-Crawford effect, namely, the directional sensitivity of photoreceptors to light entering into the eye. Moreover, it is due to Enoch that we owe the first experimental demonstration of the wave propagation of light, in the form of states known as propagation modes, in vertebrate visual photoreceptors. Such states of light contain, in ordinary conditions, a very large number of photons and have a dual character: after having propagated along photoreceptors, according to classical electromagnetic optics, their detection in the retina proceeds due to the absorption of their photon contents. © Anita Publications. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Electromagnetic radiation, Propagation, Photons, Eye vision mechanism.

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