Light can be described as an electromagnetic wave traveling through space. For purposes of ellipsometry, it is adequate to discuss the waves’s electric field behavior in space and time, also known as polarization. The electric field of a wave is always orthogonal to the propagation direction. Therefore, a wave traveling along the z-direction can be described by its x- and y- components. When the light has completely random orientation and phase, it is considered unpolarized. For ellipsometry, however, we are interested in the kind of electric field that follows a specific path and traces out a distinct shape at any point. This is known as polarized light. When two orthogonal light waves are in-phase, the resulting light will be linearly polarized. The relative amplitudes determine the resulting orientation. If the orthogonal waves are 90° out-of-phase and equal in amplitude, the resultant light is circularly polarized. The most common polarization is “elliptical”, one that combines orthogonal waves of arbitrary amplitude and phase. This is where ellipsometry gets its name.

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ANDERSON, J. The Rotation of a Crystal of Tourmaline by Plane Polarised Light. Nature 78, 413 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/078413a0

(Preliminary Note.) WHEN a beam of plane-polarised light is incident normally on a plate of tourmaline cut parallel to the optic axis, it will be absorbed or transmitted depending upon whether the axis of the tourmaline is parallel or perpendicular to the plane of polarisation of the incident light. If the arrangement is such that the light is absorbed, then in a given time a definite amount of heat energy will have passed from the source of light into the plate of tourmaline, and if, as is necessarily true, the former is at a high temperature while the latter is at a low temperature, it is plain that the entropy of the system will have been increased. The same increase in entropy would not have taken place if the orientation of the tourmaline had been such that the light had been transmitted.