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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.
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.
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.
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.
With the right circular polarization filter placed in front of the reflecting glass, the unwanted light reflected from the glass will thus be in very polarization state that is blocked by that filter, eliminating the reflection problem. The reversal of circular polarization on reflection and elimination of reflections in this manner can be ...
Reflection of light is either specular (mirror-like) or diffuse (retaining the energy, but losing the image) depending on the nature of the interface.In specular reflection the phase of the reflected waves depends on the choice of the origin of coordinates, but the relative phase between s and p (TE and TM) polarizations is fixed by the properties of the media and of the interface between them.
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.