Spectral Anomalies in the Fraunhofer Diffraction Pattern

We study the spectral characteristics theoretically and experimentally in the Fraunhofer diffraction pattern formed by the diffraction of a spatially coherent, polychromatic light through a slit. It is found that the spectrum in some diffraction directions close to the singular direction is redshifted, compared to the spectrum of the incident polychromatic light, and blueshifted in other directions, and splits into two lines at the singular direction. We show that the experimental results are consistent with the theoretical expectations.