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The first is plane or linear polarization, the second is elliptical polarization, and the third is circular polarization. The light may also be partially polarized in addition to these. The polarization of light cannot be determined by the human eye on its own. However, some animals and insects have a vision that is sensitive to polarization. [1]
This definition was all the more reasonable because it meant that when a ray was polarized by reflection (off an isotopic medium), the plane of polarization was the plane of incidence and reflection — that is, the plane containing the incident ray, the normal to the reflective surface, and the polarized reflected ray.
Kerr rotation and Kerr ellipticity are changes in the polarization of incident light which comes in contact with a gyromagnetic material. Kerr rotation is a rotation in the plane of polarization of transmitted light, and Kerr ellipticity is the ratio of the major to minor axis of the ellipse traced out by elliptically polarized light on the plane through which it propagates.
For the p polarization, the incident, reflected, and transmitted E fields are parallel to the red arrows and may therefore be described by their components in the directions of those arrows. Let those components be E i, E r, E t (redefining the symbols for the new context). Let the reflection and transmission coefficients be r p and t p.
Determination of the change in polarization state using such an apparatus is the basis of ellipsometry, by which the optical properties of specular surfaces can be gauged through reflection. Birefringence measurements have been made with phase-modulated systems for examining the transient flow behaviour of fluids.
Physical optics is used to explain effects such as diffraction. In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics that studies interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric optics is not valid.
An illustration of the polarization of light that is incident on an interface at Brewster's angle. Brewster's angle (also known as the polarization angle) is an angle of incidence at which light with a particular polarization is perfectly transmitted through a transparent dielectric surface, with no reflection.
When the magnetization vector is perpendicular to the reflection surface and parallel to the plane of incidence, the effect is called the polar Kerr effect.To simplify the analysis, and because the other two configurations have vanishing Kerr rotation at normal incidence, near normal incidence is usually employed when doing experiments in the polar geometry.