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Fresnel's "plane of polarization", traditionally used in optics, is the plane containing the magnetic vectors (B & H) and the wave-normal. Malus's original "plane of polarization" was the plane containing the magnetic vectors and the ray. (In an isotropic medium, θ = 0 and Malus's plane merges with Fresnel's.)
Diagram of the electric field of a light wave (blue), linear-polarized along a plane (purple line), and consisting of two orthogonal, in-phase components (red and green waves) In electrodynamics , linear polarization or plane polarization of electromagnetic radiation is a confinement of the electric field vector or magnetic field vector to a ...
English: Represented in the illustration toward the right is a linearly polarized electromagnetic plane wave. Each blue vector, indicating the perpendicular displacement from a point on the axis out to the sine wave, represents the magnitude and direction of the electric field for an entire plane perpendicular to the axis.
Polarization can be defined in terms of pure polarization states with only a coherent sinusoidal wave at one optical frequency. The vector in the adjacent diagram might describe the oscillation of the electric field emitted by a single-mode laser (whose oscillation frequency would be typically 10 15 times faster).
Then the electric and magnetic fields E and H are orthogonal to k at each point; they both lie in the plane "transverse" to the direction of motion. Furthermore, H is determined from E by 90-degree rotation and a fixed multiplier depending on the wave impedance of the medium. So the polarization of the light can be determined by studying E.
The polarization is characterized at each wavelength by its degree of polarization, and orientation (the e-vector angle, or scattering angle). The polarization pattern of the sky is dependent on the celestial position of the Sun. While all scattered light is polarized to some extent, light is highly polarized at a scattering angle of 90° from ...
Circular polarization and linear polarization can be considered to be special cases of elliptical polarization. This terminology was introduced by Augustin-Jean Fresnel in 1822, [1] before the electromagnetic nature of light waves was known. Elliptical polarization diagram
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