Question

Jones Matrices:

A beam of light with unknown state of polarization serves as the start to produce light beams of well-defined polarization with the aid of one or a combination of polarizing devices at your disposal (linear polarizer, quarter-wave-plates, half- wave-plates, wave-plates with any other phase shifts than 90° or 180°, rotator, etc)

E~ = < ? ,?e^(i??not) >

What device or combination of devices will you use to produce a linearly polarized light along y-axis if losing some of the incident beam energy is permitted? (Show the Jones matrix or matrices, how you set it or them up, and how the final Jones vector is what you are looking for.)

What device or combination of devices will you use to produce a left-circularly polarized light if losing some of the incident energy is permitted? (Show the Jones matrix or matrices, how you set it or them up, and how the final Jones vector is what you are looking for.)

What device or combination of devices will you use to produce a linearly polarized light along y-axis without losing any of the incident beam energy (assuming that there is no reflection loss)?

Answer 1

Let the linearly polarized light be represented as

Hence its intensity will be

After passing through the quater wave plate a phase difference of 90 degrees is introduced which results in circular polarization

Hence

After passing throught the quarter wave plate

Hence intensity =

Hence intensity remains same after passing through quater wave plate

(b) The fast axis is aligned along the direction of and the slow axis is aligned along the direction of

since the the light polarized along the y-direction has a lower refrative index and has greater velocity