Linear polarization

You don't need to be Editor-In-Chief to add or edit content to WikiDoc. You can begin to add to or edit text on this WikiDoc page by clicking on the edit button at the top of this page. Next enter or edit the information that you would like to appear here. Once you are done editing, scroll down and click the Save page button at the bottom of the page.

In electrodynamics, linear polarization or plane polarization of electromagnetic radiation is a confinement of the electric field vector or magnetic field vector to a given plane along the direction of propagation. See polarization for more information.

Historically, the orientation of a polarized electromagnetic wave has been defined in the optical regime by the orientation of the electric vector, and in the radio regime, by the orientation of the magnetic vector.

Mathematical description of linear polarization

The classical sinusoidal plane wave solution of the electromagnetic wave equation for the electric and magnetic fields is (cgs units)

for the magnetic field, where k is the wavenumber,

is the angular frequency of the wave, and c is the speed of light.

Here

is the amplitude of the field and

is the Jones vector in the x-y plane.

The wave is linearly polarized when the phase angles are equal,

.

This represents a wave polarized at an angle θ with respect to the x axis. In that case the Jones vector can be written

.

The state vectors for linear polarization in x or y are special cases of this state vector.

If unit vectors are defined such that

and

then the polarization state can written in the "x-y basis" as

.

References

• Jackson, John D. (1998). Classical Electrodynamics (3rd ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0-471-30932-X. 

See also

• Polarization of classical electromagnetic waves
• Circular polarization
• Elliptical polarization

Template:FS1037C