Sunil Bansal Page 1

POLARIZATION

TOPICS PREPARED FOR BE (UIET) STUDENTS

last update March 26, 2020

COMPILED BY Dr. Sunil Bansal, UIET, Panjab University, Chandigarh

1 Electromagnetic (EM) Waves

These are the waves which have oscillating electric and magnetic field perpendicular to each other as well
as to direction of the wave propagation as shown in Fig. 1. For example, if EM wave is moving along x-axis
then electric and magnetic fields will be confined in yz-plane. Electric and magnetic fields can be along any
directions in the yz-plane with restriction that directions of the two fields are perpendicular to each other.
Thus, there will be large number of such possibilities for fields oscillations. These type wave are called
‘Unpolarized Wave’, where fields are oscillating in all possible directions.

NOTE:
1) Now onwards, we will consider only electric field for the discussion because this one is
mainly responsible for the interaction with the material and considering only one field will
simplify our calculations.
2) Light is an EM wave. Term ’Light’ will be commonly used in the following discussion but
all the phenomena/observations/formulas are applicable to all EM waves.

2 Type of Polarization
As discussed earlier, unpolarized light have field oscillations in all directions. Restricting the direction of
oscillations is called ‘Polarization’.

Plane polarized or Linearly polarized light: In this scenario, electric field oscillation is restricted
to only one direction.

Circularly polarized light: In this scenario, electric field oscillation is restricted to one direction, but,
this direction is keep changing with time. In addition, amplitude of electric field oscillation always remains
constant. The electric field vector completes one rotation during completion of one wave. Circularly polar-
ized light is pictorially explained in Fig. 2 (a)

Elliptically polarized light: In this scenario, electric field oscillation is restricted to one direction, but,
this direction is keep changing with time. Here, amplitude of electric field oscillation keep changing between

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Figure 1: Representation of electromagnetic waves showing associated electric and magnetic field.

a maximum and minimum value. The electric field vector completes one rotation during completion of one
wave. Elliptically polarized light is pictorially explained in Fig. 2 (a)

Figure 2: Diagrammatical representation of (a) circularly and (b) elliptically polarized light.

Partially polarized light: This is a mixture of unpolarized and polarized light which is usually repre-
sented as shown in Fig. 5 (c).

The plane in which oscillations take place is called Plane of Oscillations and plane perpendicular to
Plane of Oscillations is called Plane of Polarization. For example, field is oscillating in the y-direction
then xz plane is the Plane of Polarization and xy is the Plane of Oscillations. These are demonstrated
in Fig. 3.

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Figure 3: Digram to explain plane of oscillations and the plane of polarization.

3 Conventions to Represent Polarized Light

If direction of propagation is considered as x-axis, then unpolarized light is represented with many ways
as shown in Fig. 4. Figure 4 (a) represent situation when light is moving out of the plane of the paper
and electric field can oscillate in any direction in the plane of paper. For simplicity only two perpendicular
components are shown as in Fig. 4 (b-d).

Linearly/Plane polarized are represented by showing oscillation only in one direction as depicted in Fig. 5
(a-b).

4 Requirements for the Polarization

For the possibility of polarization it is necessary to have system which can be polarized and a system
which can polarize.
System which can be polarized is the one which have different possibilities in itself for example;
• electric field vector can oscillate in different directions.

• society can have different views on some topics such religion, reservation, and other contagious issues.
NOTE: Longitudinal waves e.g. sound can not be polarized because these have only one
direction of oscillation which is along the direction of the wave of propagation. Therefore,
polarization established the transverse nature of light.
Similarly, if society do not have varying views on a topic then fringe elements can not polarize
the society.

System which can polarize: Light/Society can not polarize itself. There must be a system which have
different behavior for a particular field direction or a particular view. For social aspects, fringe elements
tends to support a particular view of the society so that they can influence the group of people having similar
opinion for their benefits. Similarly, for the polarization of light we need to have a setup which can interact
differently with the fields oscillating in different directions.

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Figure 4: Various conventions to represent unpolarized light.

Figure 5: Conventions to represent linearly polarized light (a-b) and partially polarized light (c).

5 Methods of Polarization
Depending on the methods of interactions, there are various ways to polarize the light as listed below;

• Wire Grid Polarizer

• Sheet Polarizers/Polaroids
• Polarization by Reflection

• Polarization by Refraction
• Polarization by Scattering
• Polarization by Double Refraction

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5.1 Wire Grid Polarizer

Wire grid polarizer can be effectively used in the polarization of the EM wave with larger wavelengths i.e.
radiowaves. This setup consists of thin conducting wires placed parallel to each other to form a grid. When
an unpolarized light passes through it, field component oscillating along the wire length are absorbed whereas
the perpendicular component is passed without any absorption. As a result, output light will be polarized
with field oscillations only perpendicular to direction of the wires. This phenomena is demonstrated picto-
rially in Fig. 6.

Figure 6: Demonstration of wire grid polarizer.

Cause of Polarization

Conducting wires have free electrons which are acted upon by two oscillating field components one along
the direction of the wire and another one in perpendicular direction. Under the influence of the oscillating
electric field along the direction of wire, electrons also start oscillating along the length of the wire. These
oscillating electrons result in the disappearance of the field oscillating along the length of the wire. This
disappearance of the field can be understood as:
• Oscillating electrons emit radiations in perpendicular direction to that of oscillation. Therefore electric
field along the wire length is absorbed and emit radiations in perpendicular direction. This is the
major reason for the polarization.
• Another reason can be attributed to the fact that during the oscillatory motion, electrons collide
with the imperfections in the lattice and energy is dissipated as heat. This energy loss results in the
attenuation of the field along the length of the wire.
Field oscillating perpendicular to the direction of wire also acts on the free electrons. But, due small
thickness, electrons oscillations are restricted and hence emitted radiation is of very small amplitude. Also,
as the path of the motion is short therefore energy dissipation due to collision will also be small. From both
of the arguments, it is clear that waves after passing through grid polarizer will have only field oscillations
in direction perpendicular to the length of the wire.

Grid Polarizer with Light For the complete attenuation of the field vector, it is required that the
interspacing of the wire is smaller than the wavelength of the EM wave. It is easier to design wire grid
polarizer with interspacing of ‘cm’ which can effectively polarize waves with larger wavelength such as ra-
diowaves, microwaves. For visible light, wavelength is in nanometers and it is not technically feasible to have
metallic wires placed with such a small interspacing. Therefore, wire grid polarizer is not appropriate for
the polarization of the light waves.

5.2 Sheet Polarizers/Polaroids

Polaroids are based on the principle of wire grid polarizer with difference that here wires are replaced with
molecular chains. In this arrangement quinine iodosulphate (commonly known as herapathite) are aligned

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to form long chains. Heratapthite has properties of selective absorption of light waves similar to wire grid
polarizer. These long chains are packed together in thin sheets with the help of nitro cellulose to obtain a
polarizer for light. This arrangement is called Sheet Polarizers or Polaroids.

The working principle of polaroids is same as wire grid polarizer. Here, long chain of polymer molecules
with high conductivity replaces wires. In this case, spacing between molecular chains can be reduced to the
order of the wavelength of visible light. Therefore, visible light can also be effectively polarized with the
polaroids.

There are many polaroids with different molecular chains and chemical processing i.e. H-polaroids and
K-polaroids.

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5.3 Polarization by Reflection

Suppose a polarized light, with the oscillations in the plane of incidence, falls on an optical surface. Then,
there will be an angle of incidence, dependent on the refractive index of the medium, for which reflected
component will be zero. In this case incident light is completely transmitted. This process is demonstrated
with ray-digram in Fig. 7 (a). This particular angle of incidence is also called Brewster’s angle. Now consider
that an unpolarized light falls on the surface with oscillations in the plane of incidence and perpendicular to
the plane of incidence. At Brewster’s angle, reflected component will be plane polarized with field oscillations
perpendicular to the plane of incidence and refracted/transmitted component will be partially polarized as
demonstrated in Fig. 7 (b). This is called Brewster’s law.

Figure 7: Digram to show reflection and refraction when light incident at Brewster’s angle. (a) shows the
scenario when incident light is plane polarized with oscillations in the plane of incidence whereas (b) is
ray-diagram when incident light is unpolarized.

At this angle of incidence, reflected and refracted rays are perpendicular to each other. Therefore, Snell’s
law will read as
tan(i ) = µ, (1)
known as mathematical formulation of the Brewster’s law.

Thus, if unpolarized light falls on the surface at Brewster’s angle then reflected component
will plane polarized with oscillation restricted perpendicular to the plane of incidence.

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5.4 Polarization by Refraction / Pile of Plates

As discussed in previous section, at Brewster’s angle reflected component is completely plane polarized
with field oscillations perpendicular to the plane of incidence. In this case refracted component is partially
polarized light which is a mixture of unpolarized light and plane polarized light with oscillation in the plane
of incidence. If these refracted rays are made to fall on an other surface at Brewster’s angle, then reflected
component will be again plane polarized with field oscillations perpendicular to the plane of incidence and
refracted rays will be partially polarized. After second refraction fraction of polarized light is increased in
the refracted rays as compared to the partially polarized light after first refraction. This behavior is shown in
Fig. 8. If many glass plates are parallel to each other, then after many refractions, refracted component will
also be plane polarized with oscillations in the plane of incidence. These pile of plates help in obtaining plane
polarized light in the refracted component but with small intensity due to absorption within the material. In
this case, intensity of the reflected component increase because all the reflected components will be parallel
to each and superpose to give higher intensity.

Figure 8: Ray-diagram when unpolarized light incident at Brewster’s angle for two parallel optical surface.

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5.5 Polarization by Scattering

Scattering is the phenomena in which medium absorb a part of the incident energy and re-emits in the same
or any other direction. According to Rayleigh’s criterion, scattering will be more if the size of the medium
particles is comparable with the wavelength of the incident wave.

Suppose a unpolarized wave traveling along the x-axis falls on the particles located on the origin. As per
EM wave definition, electric fields will be oscillating along y- and z-axis. These oscillating fields will produce
oscillations in the medium along the direction of fields y- and z-axis. As discussed earlier, an oscillating
charge will emit radiations in the direction perpendicular to the direction of oscillations. Thus, oscillations
in y-axis will send radiations along z-axis and the oscillations in z-axis with emit radiations along y-axis. If
we observe along the z-axis, then there will be plane polarized wave with oscillations only along y-axis and
vice-versa for the y-axis. These observations can be understood from Fig. 9.

Figure 9: Represent the polarization by scattering.

Polarization by scattering is, practically, of no use because of the mixing of plane polarized component
with unpolarized ones.

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5.6 Polarization by Double-Refraction

There are certain crystals i.e. mica, tourmaline, quartz which show anomalous refraction. These crystals
split incident rays, after refraction, in two components. One of the component follows laws of optics and
known as Ordinary rays or O-ray but other one (known as Extraordinary rays or E-ray) do not follow
optics laws. This phenomena is called Double Refraction and shown Fig. 10 (a)

O-ray: These behave as ordinary rays and follow Snell’s law of refraction. O-ray have same speed in all
directions within the crystal.

E-ray: These do not behave as ordinary rays and do not follow Snell’s law of refraction. E-ray have
different speeds in different directions within the crystal.

Optic Axis: There are certain directions within the crystal along which E-ray and O-ray have same
speed. These directions are known as optic axis. Some crystals i.e. calcite, quartz, tourmaline are uniaxial
and have only one optic axis. There are some crystal which have two optic axis i.e. mica, topaz, borax known
as biaxial crystals.

Figure 10: Represent the polarization by scattering.

Positive and Negative Crystals: Negative crystals are those which have speed of O-ray (vo ) smaller
the E-ray (ve ) i.e. vo < ve . Calcite is an example of negative crystals. On the other hands, positive crystals
have speed of O-ray (vo ) larger the E-ray (ve ) i.e. vo > ve . Quartz falls under the category of positive crystals.

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State of Polarization: Both O-ray and E-ray are plane polarized light. O-ray have oscillations re-
stricted to direction perpendicular to the optic axis whereas E-ray have oscillations only along the optic axis
as depicted in Fig. 10 (b). As both type of rays are linearly polarized, therefore doubly refracting materials
can be used to obtain polarized lights.

In order to obtain plane plane polarized, one of the E-ray and O-ray need to be absorbed. There are two
possible methods to achieve this;
• There are certain crystals i.e. tourmaline which have different absorption coefficients for rays with field
oscillating in different directions. When O-ray and E-ray passes through such a crystal one of rays
absorbed faster as compared to another one. This method of selective absorption is called Dichroism.

• As E-ray and O-ray have different speeds, hence there rays faces different refractive index in a material.
It is possible to design setup where one of the rays can be internal reflected whereas another one passes
with simple refraction. Nicol Prism is most commonly used setup for this purpose as discussed in
following section.
Nicol Prism:

It is made up of a double refracting material usually calcite in the form of a parallelogram with 71o and
109o . The end faces are grounded to reduce angle to 68o and polished. Crystal is cut along one of its diameter
and cemented together with optical glue ‘Canada Balsam’. Uniqueness of Canada Balsam is it refractive
index (µcb = 1.55) which lies between that of E-ray (µe = 1.486) and O-ray (µo = 1.658). Therefore, O-ray
moves from denser to rarer medium while traveling towards Canada Balsam and there is a possibility of
total internal reflection if incident angle is larger than critical angle. On the other hands, E-ray moves from
rarer to denser medium therefore suffer normal refraction while passing through Canada Balsam. With these
settings, O-ray will suffer total internal reflection and can be absorbed on the lower surface by blackening it
and output will have only E-ray which is plane plane polarized. Design and the process of polarization with
Nicol Prism is shown in Fig. 11.

Figure 11: Represent the polarization by scattering.

Note 1: The end faces are grounded to have angle 68o to reduce the possibility transmission or internal
reflection of both E-ray and O-ray simultaneously.
Note 2: If quartz crystal is used instead of calcite for the Nicol Prism, then it will not solve the purpose
of polarization. This is due to fact that quartz crystal is a positive crystal with speed of O-ray larger than
E-ray. Also, refractive index of Canada Balsam is smaller than than of O-ray and E-ray. Therefore, either
both rays will be internally reflected or transmitted on falling on the interface of quartz and Canada Balsam.

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6 Malus Law
Transmission axis is the axis along which field oscillations are transmitted and the perpendicular, to the
transmission axis, axis is the absorption whose field oscillations are absorbed. In Nicol Prism, its optic axis
decides the transmission axis. When a light falls on the Nicol Prism or any other polarizer, its intensity
reduces to half due to absorption of the one of the electric field component. Output light will be polarized
with oscillations along the transmission axis. If another Nicol Prism is placed in front of the output light with
its transmission axis parallel to that of 1st Nicol Prism, then light will pass through 2nd prism without any
change. But, if transmission axis of 2nd prism is perpendicular to the first one, there will be zero intensity
at the output of the 2nd prism. For intermediate orientations between the two transmission axis, there is
continuous variation in the intensity of the output light given Malus Law defined

I = I00 cos2 θ = I0 cos2 θ, (2)

where, I’0 is intensity of light falling on the 2nd polarizer, I0 is the intensity of unpolarized light falling on
the first polarizer, and θ is the angle between transmission axis of two polarizers. As mentioned earlier

I00 = I0 /2 (3)

Usually, first Nicol Prism is referred as ‘Polarizer’ whereas second one is referred as ‘Analyzer’.
Note: With full rotation of 360o of Analyzer, output intensity will vary between 0 and I0 /2 with two posi-
tions of maxima and two positions of 0 intensity (complete extinction).

7 Phase Retardation Plate/ Birefringence

The O-ray and E-ray travel with different speeds, except along optic axis, through the material. This implies
refractive index of the doubly refracting material is different for E-ray and O-ray. This property of certain
material to offer different refractive index to light having field oscillations in perpendicular directions is
known as Birefringence.

As E-ray and O-ray travel with different speed, therefore, after traversing through doubly refracting
material ray traveling with slow speed will lag behind the another one. As a consequence, there will be
a path/phase difference between E-ray and E-ray depending on the refractive indices for two rays and the
thickness of the material. Therefore, plate of double refracting materials is also known as Phase Retarda-
tion Plate

Consider a plane polarized waves, having electric field amplitude E0 , is moving along z-axis, then x- and
y-components of the field can be written as ;
E0
Ex = √ cos(kz − ωt), (4)
2
E0
Ey = √ cos(kz − ωt), (5)
2
where, ‘k’ is the wave number and ‘ω’ is the angular frequency.
When wave enters in double refracting material, its frequency remain same but wave number changes ac-
cording to refractive index as below
ω
k = (in the air) (6)
c
µω
k(in the medium of refractive index of µ) = = µk(in the air) (7)
c
If the ‘t’ is the thickness of material, then field components after emerging the material can be written
as (assuming O-ray and E-ray are along x-axis and y-axis respectively)

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E0 E0
Ex = √ cos(µo kt − ωt) = √ cos(ωt − φo ), (8)
2 2
E0 E0
Ey = √ cos(µe kt − ωt) = √ cos(ωt − φe ), (9)
2 2
where φo = µo kt and µe = µe kt. Thus phase difference between E-ray and O-ray can be written as
ω
φ = φo − φe = kt(µo − µe ) = (µo − µe )t (10)
c
Above equation give the phase difference introduced between E-ray and O-ray after traveling through a
double refractive crystal thickness ‘t’ which offers refractive index µe and µo respectively. Path difference
between E-ray and O-ray can be written as
λ
∆x = × φ = (µo − µe )t (11)
2π
Due to change in phase difference, there will be change in the sense of polarization of the output light
(superposition of E-ray and O-ray). Hence, retardation plates can also be used for the analysis of the
polarized lights as will be discussed in the next sections.

7.1 Quarter Wave Plate

These are the plate of double refracting material which introduces a path difference of λ/4 between the E-ray
and O-ray. Thickness to achieve this path difference can be obtained as
λ
∆x = = (µo − µe )t (12)
4
λ
=⇒ t = (13)
4(µo − µe )
After passing through Quarter Wave Plate, E-ray and O-ray will have phase difference of π/2. Compo-
nents of the electric field components can be written (refer to Eq. 8 and 9) as
E0
Ex = √ cos(ωt), (14)
2
E0 E0 π E0
Ey = √ cos(ωt − φ) = √ cos(ωt − ) = √ sin(ωt), (15)
2 2 2 2
Above equations can be reduced
E2
Ex2 + Ey2 = 0 (16)
2
which represents an equation of a circle. Thus, plane polarized light after passing through a Quarter Wave
Plate will convert into a circularly polarized. If fields components do not have same amplitude, emergent
light will be elliptically polarized.

7.2 Half Wave Plate

These are the plate of double refracting material which introduces a path difference of λ/2 between the E-ray
and O-ray. Thickness to achieve this path difference can be obtained as
λ
∆x = = (µo − µe )t (17)
2
λ
=⇒ t = (18)
2(µo − µe )
If plane polarized light is passed through half wave plate, it remains plane polarized. If left circularly
polarized light passes through half wave plate, it gets changed in right circularly polarized light and vice-
versa.

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7.3 Full Wave Plate

These are the plate of double refracting material which introduces a path difference of λ between the E-ray
and O-ray. Thickness to achieve this path difference can be obtained as

∆x = λ = (µo − µe )t (19)

λ
=⇒ t = (20)
(µo − µe )

8 Analysis of Polarized Lights

As discussed so far, light with following polarizations is possible
• unpolarized
• linearly polarized

• circularly polarized
• elliptically polarized
• mixture of linearly polarized and unpolarized
• mixture of circularly polarized and unpolarized

• mixture of elliptically polarized and unpolarized

With eyes only, all of the above lights will look same. But with usage of Polarizer/Analyzer and Wave
plates, it is possible to identify different polarization states.

If light is passed through a polarizer following behavior will be observed

• If light intensity varies continuously and there is complete extinction at two position, then light is
linearly polarized.
• If there is no variation in the intensity, then input light can be either unpolarized, circularly or a mix-
ture of unpolarized and circularly polarized light. Now, before polarizer place a Quarter Wave Plate.
After passing through Quarter Wave Plate, unpolarized will remain same, circularly polarized light
will change to linearly polarized and mixture will change to that of unpolarized and linearly polarized
light. If we rotate the polarizer then
light (which was initially circularly polarized) will show complete extinction at two posi-
tions,
light (which was initially unpolarized) will not show any variation,
light (which was initially mixture of unpolarized and circularly polarized) will show vari-
ation in the intensity but without complete extinction.

• If there is a variation of intensity but without complete extinction, then input light can be either ellip-
tically polarized, a mixture of elliptically polarized and unpolarized or a mixture of linearly polarized
and a unpolarized lights. Now a quarter wave plate is placed in front of polarizer with its axis parallel
to the transmission axis of the polarizer at the position of maximum intensity. The elliptically polarized
light converts into linearly polarized which can be identified with two positions of complete extinction.
If the complete extinction does not occur and the position of maximum intensity is same as before
then input light can be identified as a mixture of unpolarized and linearly polarized light. Finally, if
the position of maximum intensity occurs at different orientation then input light can identified as a
mixture of elliptically polarized and unpolarized light.

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9 Application of Polarization
– To study the optical activity of materials.
– Polaroids can be fitted in the head lights of automobile as well as their windscreens to avoid glare.
– Polaroids can be used a window screens which have possibility to control the light intensity.
– Polaroid can be used in sun glasses to avoid glare by reducing the intensity.

NUMERICAL are usually based on the Brewster’s Law, Malus Law and the Wave Plates.
Few problems are listed.

1. What will be Brewster angle for a glass of refractive index 1.5 immersed in the water of refractive index
4/3. (ans 48.4o )
2. Unpolarized light falls on two polarizing sheets along each other. What will be the angle between
transmission axis of two polarizing sheets if intensity of the transmitted light is 1/6 of the incident
light? (ans 54.7o )

3. A ray of light strikes a glass plate at an angle of 60o . If the reflected and refracted rays perpendicular
to each other, find the refractive index of the plate. (ans 1.73)
4. Two Nicol prims are set so that maximum light is transmitted. Through what angle should one of the
prism be rotated to reduce intensity to one half of the maximum intensity? (ans 45o )

5. Calculate the thickness of i) quarter wave plate and ii) half wave plate of a quartz for light of wavelength
= 500 nm, µo = 1.544 and µe = 1.533. (ans 0.113 × 10−4 m, 0.227 × 10−4 m)

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