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The Stokes I, Q, U and V parameters. The Stokes parameters are a set of values that describe the polarization state of electromagnetic radiation.They were defined by George Gabriel Stokes in 1851, [1] [2] as a mathematically convenient alternative to the more common description of incoherent or partially polarized radiation in terms of its total intensity (I), (fractional) degree of ...
Circular polarization is often encountered in the field of optics and, in this section, the electromagnetic wave will be simply referred to as light. The nature of circular polarization and its relationship to other polarizations is often understood by thinking of the electric field as being divided into two components that are perpendicular to ...
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 ...
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.
Mueller calculus is a matrix method for manipulating Stokes vectors, which represent the polarization of light. It was developed in 1943 by Hans Mueller. In this technique, the effect of a particular optical element is represented by a Mueller matrix—a 4×4 matrix that is an overlapping generalization of the Jones matrix.
A phase retarder is an optical element that produces a phase difference between two orthogonal polarization components of a monochromatic polarized beam of light. [9] Mathematically, using kets to represent Jones vectors, this means that the action of a phase retarder is to transform light with polarization
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.
Photon polarization is the quantum mechanical description of the classical polarized sinusoidal plane electromagnetic wave.An individual photon can be described as having right or left circular polarization, or a superposition of the two.