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In electrodynamics, circular polarization of an electromagnetic wave is a polarization state in which, at each point, the electromagnetic field of the wave has a constant magnitude and is rotating at a constant rate in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the wave.
Optical rotation, also known as polarization rotation or circular birefringence, is the rotation of the orientation of the plane of polarization about the optical axis of linearly polarized light as it travels through certain materials. Circular birefringence and circular dichroism are the manifestations of optical activity.
Its input polarization must be linear. Resulting output polarization is rotating linear polarization. Likewise, circular polarization can be depolarized with a rotating quarterwave plate. Output polarization is again linear. If a halfwave and a quarterwave plate are concatenated and rotate at different speeds, any input polarization is depolarized.
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.
Circular polarization can be created by sending linearly polarized light through a quarter-wave plate oriented at 45° to the linear polarization to create two components of the same amplitude with the required phase shift. The superposition of the original and phase-shifted components causes a rotating electric field vector, which is depicted ...
A homogeneous circular polarizer can be created by sandwiching a linear polarizer between two quarter-wave plates. [12] Specifically we take the circular polarizer described previously, which transforms circularly polarized light into linear polarized light, and add to it a second quarter-wave plate rotated 90° relative to the first one.
Raman optical activity can be observed in a number of forms, depending on the polarization of the incident and the scattered light. For instance, in the scattered circular polarization (SCP) experiment, the incident light is linearly polarized and differences in circular polarization of the scattered light are measured.
A circularly polarized wave may be resolved into two linearly polarized waves in phase quadrature with their planes of polarization at right angles to each other. Circular polarization may be referred to as "right-hand" or "left-hand," depending on whether the helix describes the thread of a right-hand or left-hand screw, respectively [16]