Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Thus reflected light from horizontal surfaces (such as the surface of a road) at a distance much greater than one's height (so that the incidence angle of specularly reflected light is near, or usually well beyond the Brewster angle) is strongly s-polarized.
Therefore, the polarization state of reflected light (even if initially unpolarized) is generally changed. A stack of plates at Brewster's angle to a beam reflects off a fraction of the s-polarized light at each surface, leaving (after many such plates) a mainly p-polarized beam.
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.
Fresnel promptly confirmed by experiment that the equations correctly predicted the direction of polarization of the reflected beam when the incident beam was polarized at 45° to the plane of incidence, for light incident from air onto glass or water; in particular, the equations gave the correct polarization at Brewster's angle. [22]
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.
Light reflected by the surface (6) (or coming from a backlight) is horizontally polarized (5) and passes through the liquid-crystal modulator (3) sandwiched in between transparent layers (2, 4) containing electrodes. Horizontally polarized light is blocked by the vertically oriented polarizer (1), except where its polarization has been rotated ...
When light strikes an interface between two materials, the reflected light is generally partially polarized. However, if the light strikes the interface at Brewster's angle, the reflected light is completely linearly polarized parallel to the interface. Brewster's angle is given by
Continuum light is linearly polarized at different locations across the face of the Sun (limb polarization) though taken as a whole, this polarization cancels. Linear polarization in spectral lines is usually created by anisotropic scattering of photons on atoms and ions which can themselves be polarized by this interaction.