This document provides information about circular and elliptical polarizers. It discusses that circular polarizers can create or selectively pass circularly polarized light and are used in photography and 3D glasses. It then explains how a quarter-wave plate placed after a linear polarizer can transform linearly polarized light into circularly polarized light. The document also defines elliptical polarization as having an electric field that traces out an ellipse, and notes it can be considered a general case of both circular and linear polarization.

1. WEL-COME TO
RAI SAHEB BHANWAR
SINGH COLLEGE
NASRULLAGANJ

2. PHYSICS PRESENTATION
Topic- Circular and
Elliptical Polarizer
Presented to Presented by
Gyan rao Dhote Sanjay Panwar

3. Circular polarizers-
Circular polarizers, also referred to as circular polarizing
filters, can be used to create circularly polarized light or
alternatively to selectively absorb or pass clockwise and
counter-clockwise circularly polarized light. They are used
aspolarizing filters in photography to reduce oblique
reflections from non-metallic surfaces, and are the lenses of
the 3D glasses worn for the viewing
some stereoscopic movies (notably, the RealD 3D variety),
where the polarization of light is used to differentiate which
image should be seen by the left and right eye

5. There are several ways to create circularly polarized light, the
cheapest and most common involves placing a quarter-wave
plate after a linear polarizer and directing unpolarized light through
the linear polarizer. The linearly polarized light leaving the linear
polarizer is transformed into circularly polarized light by the quarter
wave plate. The transmission axis of the linear polarizer needs to be
half way (45°) between the fast and slow
axes of the quarter-wave plate. In the arrangement above, the
transmission axis of the linear polarizer is at a positive 45° angle
relative to the right horizontal and is represented with an orange line.
The quarter-wave plate has a horizontal slow axis and a vertical fast
axis and they are also represented using orange lines. In this instance
the unpolarized light entering the linear polarizer is displayed as a
single wave whose amplitude and angle of linear polarization are
suddenly changing.
I

6. circularly polarized when viewed from the receiver.

Because the quarter-wave plate is made of
a birefringent material, when in the wave plate, the light
travels at different speeds depending on the direction of
its electric field. This means that the horizontal
component which is along the slow axis of the wave plate
will travel at a slower speed than the component that is
directed along the vertical fast axis. Initially the two
components are in phase, but as the two components
travel through the wave plate the horizontal component
of the light drifts farther behind that of the vertical. By
adjusting the thickness of the wave plate one can control
how much the horizontal.

7. ELLIPTICAL POLARIZATION-
Inelectrodynamics, elliptical polarization is
the polarization of electromagnetic radiation such that the tip of
the electric field vector describes an ellipse in any fixed plane
intersecting, and normal to, the direction of propagation. An
elliptically polarized wave may be resolved into two linearly
polarized waves in phase quadrature, with their polarization planes
at right angles to each other. Since the electric field can rotate
clockwise or counterclockwise as it propagates, elliptically polarized
waves exhibit chirality.
Other forms of polarization, such as circular and linear polarization,
can be considered to be special cases of elliptical polarization.

9. Mathematical description of elliptical
polarization-
The classical sinusoidal plane wave solution of
the electromagnetic wave equation for
the electricand magnetic fields is (cgs units)