# Can circularly polarized light interfere with linearly polarized

1. ### Albert V

26
Can circularly polarized light interfere with linearly polarized light?

2. ### chrisbaird

614
Re: Interference

Yes. You can think of circularly polarized light as the coherent sum of two orthogonal, linearly polarized waves that are 90 degrees out of phase. So the other linearly polarized wave will interfere with one of the components.

3. ### clem

1,276
Re: Interference

The two beams would have to come from splitting single beam.

4. ### y33t

107
Re: Interference

Why ?

5. ### clem

1,276
Re: Interference

The two interfering beams must be coherent. Two independent beams would have incoherent phase relations.

6. ### y33t

107
Re: Interference

They can be coherent and belong to different identical sources ?

7. ### Claude Bile

1,479
Re: Interference

Coherence is a bit of a red herring here. Do the Jones calculus and you can see quite clearly that a CP wave and a LP wave can interfere (or indeed, must interfere if they overlap spatially).

Claude.