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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.
A simple polarimeter to measure this rotation consists of a long tube with flat glass ends, into which the sample is placed. At each end of the tube is a Nicol prism or other polarizer. Light is shone through the tube, and the prism at the other end, attached to an eye-piece, is rotated to arrive at the region of complete brightness or that of ...
In all materials the rotation varies with wavelength. The variation is caused by two quite different phenomena. The first accounts in most cases for the majority of the variation in rotation and should not strictly be termed rotatory dispersion. It depends on the fact that optical activity is actually circular birefringence.
J.Z. Buchwald, 1989, The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light: Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Century, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-07886-8. O. Darrigol, 2012, A History of Optics: From Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, Oxford, ISBN 978-0-19-964437-7.
The Faraday effect or Faraday rotation, sometimes referred to as the magneto-optic Faraday effect (MOFE), [1] is a physical magneto-optical phenomenon. The Faraday effect causes a polarization rotation which is proportional to the projection of the magnetic field along the direction of the light propagation.
A broadband prismatic rotator rotates the linear polarization by 90° using seven internal reflections to induce collinear rotation, as shown in the diagram. [2] The polarization is rotated in the second reflection, but that leaves the beam in a different plane and at a right angle relative to the incident beam.
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Then by implementing a Faraday rotator with a rotation of 45°, inadvertent downstream reflections from a linearly polarized source will return with the polarization rotated by 90° and can be simply blocked by a polarizer; this is the basis of optical isolators used to prevent undesired reflections from disrupting an upstream optical system ...