Huygens–Fresnel principle The Huygens–Fresnel principle (named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel) is a method of analysis applied to problems of wave propagation both in the far-field limit and in near-field diffraction and also reflection. It states that every point on a wavefront is itself the source of spherical wavelets, and the secondary wavelets emanating from different points mutually interfere.The sum of these spherical wavelets forms the wavefront. Any continous reflection interface can be considered as a continuous diffractors. The upper figure show a single diffraction waveform which is generated with a diffractor at 0.4 seconds and 2500 meters. Lower figure shows the superposition of 50 diffraction waves.