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Polarizers which maintain the same axes of polarization with varying angles of incidence [clarification needed] are often called [citation needed] Cartesian polarizers, since the polarization vectors can be described with simple Cartesian coordinates (for example, horizontal vs. vertical) independent from the orientation of the polarizer surface.
Malus is probably best remembered for Malus's law, giving the resultant intensity, when a polariser is placed in the path of an incident beam. A follower of Laplace, both his statement of the Malus's law and his earlier works on polarisation and birefringence were formulated using the corpuscular theory of light. [1]
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.)
Michael Faraday holding a piece of glass of the type he used to demonstrate the effect of magnetism on polarization of light, c. 1857.. By 1845, it was known through the work of Augustin-Jean Fresnel, Étienne-Louis Malus, and others that different materials are able to modify the direction of polarization of light when appropriately oriented, [4] making polarized light a very powerful tool to ...
Polarimetry is the measurement and interpretation of the polarization of transverse waves, most notably electromagnetic waves, such as radio or light waves. Typically polarimetry is done on electromagnetic waves that have traveled through or have been reflected , refracted or diffracted by some material in order to characterize that object.
The fact that light could be polarized was for the first time qualitatively explained by Newton using the particle theory. Étienne-Louis Malus in 1810 created a mathematical particle theory of polarization. Jean-Baptiste Biot in 1812 showed that this theory explained all known phenomena of light polarization. At that time the polarization was ...
In general, the polarization of monochromatic light is completely described via four Stokes parameters, which form a (non-orthonormal) vector space when the various waves are incoherent. For light propagating in the z direction, with electric field: In cosmology, no circular polarization is expected, so V is not considered.
In optics, polarized light can be described using the Jones calculus, [1] invented by R. C. Jones in 1941. Polarized light is represented by a Jones vector, and linear optical elements are represented by Jones matrices. When light crosses an optical element the resulting polarization of the emerging light is found by taking the product of the ...