# what happens when a plane polarized light is incident on a half wave plate? [closed]

what happens when a plane polarized light is incident on a half wave plate? i know what happens in the case of a quarter wave plate but there is no information available about the half wave plate. Please help

## closed as off-topic by garyp, Kyle Kanos, Jon Custer, hft, Cosmas ZachosJun 26 '18 at 13:58

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• "there is no information available about the half wave plate" - ??? rp-photonics.com/waveplates.html – Alfred Centauri Sep 30 '17 at 0:35
• This question does not show any research effort. – Alfred Centauri Sep 30 '17 at 0:35
• I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because there's no evidence of prior research. – garyp Jun 21 '18 at 13:03

For example, if the angle between the polarization of the incident light and the principal axes of the half wave plate is $45^\circ$, the polarization plane will be rotated with $90^\circ$.
A Half wave plate introduces $\pi$ phase shift between $x$ and $y$ components (there is a $\lambda/2$ shift in phase). Hence, we get a rotation of $2\theta$ if incident at an angle of $\theta$