[OPTICS] Faraday Rotator with waveplates

[MarkIt]

Hi all

I'm trying to replicate the effect of a 45° Faraday rotator using a series of waveplates instead.

I've encountered some difficulties using the jones matrix notation, due to the differencies of the matrix formulas between the books I'm referring to.

The main book I'm using is: "Polarized Light" by Goldstein.

By viewing the problem on the Poincaré sphere I think the solution is a lambda/4 waveplate + lambda/4 waveplate rotated by 45°

But the matematical results via jones calculus don't support my idea.

I hope you can help me.

Best regards

Mark

 

[UltrafastPED]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_isolator

You cannot replicate a Faraday rotator with wave plates. The first is irreversible, the second is not.

 

[MarkIt]

Thank you for your answer.
In my experiment I don't use the backward propagation of the light, I only use the forward one. My goal is to achieve the same 45° polarization rotation using the waveplates instead.

 

[UltrafastPED]

For a detailed, mathematical tutorial see: http://www.ece.rice.edu/~daniel/262/pdf/lecture16.pdf

 

[MarkIt]

Thanks for the help, I think the closest solution is a half wave plate tilt by pi/8. The resulting jones matrix has the same values of the rotator one, but differs in 2 signs.

 

[Redbelly98]

Yes, a single halfwave plate is the most straightforward way to rotate a linearly polarized beam.

p.s. welcome to Physics Forums!

 

[MarkIt]

Thank you very much! :)