4.1: What you should know and be able to do after studying this chapter
- Page ID
- 57094
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- Understand how different states of polarisation are caused by the ratio of the amplitudes and the difference in phase between two orthogonal components of the electric field.
- Know that elliptical polarisation is the most general state of polarisation.
- Know that linear polarisation and circular polarisation are special cases.
- Know how to compute the degree of polarisation.
- Be able to work with Jones vectors and Jones matrices.
- Know how birefringence is exploited to create wave plates and know the tyes of wave plates.
- Know how to rotate a state of linear polarisation over a given angle.
- Know how to change linear polarisation into circular polarisation and conversely.
- Be able to show that elliptical polarisation can be written as the sum of two orthogonal linear polarisations and as the sum of two circular polarisations.