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Light polarized in the plane is said to be p-polarized, while that polarized perpendicular to it is s-polarized. At a special angle known as Brewster's angle, no p-polarized light is reflected from the surface, thus all reflected light must be s-polarized, with an electric field perpendicular to the plane of incidence.
Circular dichroism causes incident linearly polarized light to become elliptically polarized. The two phenomena are closely related, just as are ordinary absorption and dispersion. If the entire optical rotatory dispersion spectrum is known, the circular dichroism spectrum can be calculated, and vice versa.
An ideal depolarizer would output randomly polarized light whatever its input, but all practical depolarizers produce pseudo-random output polarization. Optical systems are often sensitive to the polarization of light reaching them (for example grating-based spectrometers). Unwanted polarization of the input to such a system may cause errors in ...
In 1822, Augustin-Jean Fresnel found that optical rotation could be explained as a species of birefringence: whereas previously known cases of birefringence were due to the different speeds of light polarized in two perpendicular planes, optical rotation was due to the different speeds of right-hand and left-hand circularly polarized light. [12]
This equation is known as Brewster's law, and the angle defined by it is Brewster's angle. The physical mechanism for this can be qualitatively understood from the manner in which electric dipoles in the media respond to p-polarized light. One can imagine that light incident on the surface is absorbed, and then re-radiated by oscillating ...
A waveplate or retarder is an optical device that alters the polarization state of a light wave travelling through it. Two common types of waveplates are the half-wave plate, which rotates the polarization direction of linearly polarized light, and the quarter-wave plate, which converts between different elliptical polarizations (such as the ...
Later, in 1690, Huygens identified polarization as a characteristic of light and provided a demonstration using two identical blocks of calcite placed in succession. Each crystal divided an incoming ray of light into two, which Huygens referred to as "regular" and "irregular" (in modern terminology: ordinary and extraordinary). However, if the ...
When plane-polarised light passes through some crystals, the velocity of left-polarized light is different from that of the right-polarized light, thus the crystals are said to have two refractive indices, i.e. double refracting. Construction: The polarimeter consists of a monochromatic source S which is placed at focal point of a convex lens L ...