Circularly polarized light through a polarimeter

[lcr2139]

What happens when circularly polarized light goes through a polarimeter? In my experiment the polarimeter is made up of two crossed PEMs and a polarizer.

 

[lcr2139]

Also, what about linearly polarized light?

 

[lcr2139]

how does the angle of the polarizer fit into this problem?

 

[drvrm]

What happens when circularly polarized light goes through a polarimeter?

Interestingly, a monochromatic linearly polarized light beam can be considered as a superposition of two circularly polarized electromagnetic waves that are propagating in the same direction with the same frequency but the opposite sense of rotation. see the animation of circularly polarized light ...

see the details<http://ja01.chem.buffalo.edu/~jochena/research/opticalactivity.html>
it may help...

 

[Andy Resnick]

What happens when circularly polarized light goes through a polarimeter? In my experiment the polarimeter is made up of two crossed PEMs and a polarizer.

What kind of polarimeter/ellipsometer? Also, what is a PEM?

 

[lcr2139]

a polarizer is made up of 2 PEMs and a polarizer. It is not a single optical element. A PEM is a photoelastic modulator.

 

[nasu]

The first part is probably a typo. If a polarizer includes a polarizer, you will have an infinite regression. :)
But what do you mean by crossed PEMs?

 

[lcr2139]

crossed PEMs mean that one is at 0 degrees and the other is at 45 degrees.

 

[blue_leaf77]

What happens when circularly polarized light goes through a polarimeter? In my experiment the polarimeter is made up of two crossed PEMs and a polarizer.

If you know how a linearly polarized light is affected by a polarimeter, extending it to circularly polarized light is not too difficult.

 

[nasu]

crossed PEMs mean that one is at 0 degrees and the other is at 45 degrees.

What feature of the PEM is at these angle?

 

[Andy Resnick]

a polarizer is made up of 2 PEMs and a polarizer. It is not a single optical element. A PEM is a photoelastic modulator.

Zoiks... sounds complicated.

Well, the easiest way to proceed is to write out the Jones matrix for the instrument. I'm not sure what the Jones matrix is for an oriented PEM, but my guess is that it is similar to an elliptic retarder

http://spie.org/Publications/Proceedings/Paper/10.1117/12.429559
https://books.google.com/books?id=y...&q="jones matrix" "elliptic retarder"&f=false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_calculus#cite_note-5