# Tag Info

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Light does become polarized in a magnetic field. The magnetic field of a black hole was detected due to the polarization of light. Check this article: http://www.iflscience.com/space/black-holes-powerful-magnetic-field-observed-first-time

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You may wish to look at the Fresnel formulas (see "Fresnel Equations" Wiki page), which are derived from the Maxwell equations.

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A year later, here is a probabilistic (pseudo QM) explanation. I am confused by the diagram that appears to show unpolarized laser light - I thought that most lasers by their nature produce polarized light; after the first polarizer that question is moot, so let's start there. A polarized photon can be thought of as being in a mixture of states - when it ...

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The LCD panel consists of elements shown in the figure below. The unpolarized light from backlight panel travels through polarizer, after which the light is linearly polarized. TFT panel controls the voltage on the liquid crystal, voltage applied will cause the liquid crystals to "twist" and thus rotate the polarization of the light. Light then passes the ...

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Whenever someone investigates the interaction between photons and edges we interpret fringes behind an edge as manifestation of particles wave character. And at the same moment we always emphasize that this waves are not observable direct. So it's only one of the possible interpretations that from fringes with a wavelike intensity distribution behind an edge ...

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We would expect the screen to display bright images as dark (and vice versa) as one of the polarisers has changed 90degs

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Are you asking why describing an arbitrary polarization can be described as a combination of linear polarizations (not necessarily in phase), or what the physical mechanism is within the polarizing material? The answer to the first case is relatively simple: any polarizer will block the component of incoming light perpendicular to its axis and pass the ...

3

What you are seeing is stress in the window resulting in birefringence: the speed of propagation of polarized light depends on the direction of polarization. In the setup you have, the light in the sky is partially polarized because that's how Rayleigh scattering works; this partially polarized light is transmitted through the window where it rotates ...

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A quarter wave plate together with a polarizing beam splitter is a standard way of building an optical isolator. In an optical isolator the light traveling in one direction is transmitted but the light travelling in the reverse direction is reflected. This is important when reading compact discs because the reflected light carries the signal that you want ...

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What you may not realize from that website is that the same optical element is shown on the left and on the right. Laser emission and detection happen simultaneously, but for clarity they are drawn separately. See how circular polarization changed after the reflection from the CD. Now, when it comes through the quater-wave plate it has polarization ...

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The usual use of an image like the one you posted is to identify nonuniform regions of the material. The amount of variation in polarization at any location on the protractor is related to the amount of strain, or nonuniformity, in the material itself. As explained in this post , there are a couple underlying optical principles which cause the color ...

1

If we write $A_\mu(x)=\varepsilon_\mu(p)e^{ipx}$, the polarization vector should satisfy $\varepsilon_\mu p^\mu=0$, which is a Lorentiz-invariant relation, and is necessary to make sure that we have an irreducible representation of the Lorentz group (actually, the little group that leaves the momentum invariant). This knocks down the number of D.O.F to 3. ...

3

The longitudinal mode decouples from all physical processes as a consequence of gauge invariance, which in turn forces the Ward identity $$k^\mu \mathcal{M}_\mu = 0$$ where the S-matrix element decomposition $\mathcal{M}^\mu$ is obtained from the polarization vector $\epsilon^\mu(k)$ by $\mathcal{M} = \epsilon^\mu(k) \mathcal{M}_\mu$. This decoupling (and, ...

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