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.

What is polarized lightcalled

eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Reference Module Physical and Materials Science, Reference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics

He is a member of the Austrian Academy of Science and has published more than 160 publications (including Nature Medicine and PNAS) in peer reviewed journals and is first, co-author or corresponding author of more than 400 conference proceedings or abstracts resulting in a h-index of 49.  His group’s publications have been cited more than 7700 times in the last 10 years with more than 900 citations in years 2008, 2010 and 2011. He is (Co)Editor of 11 books, including “Optical Coherence Tomography: Technology and Applications” (2008). Wolfgang Drexler gave more than 160 invited or keynote talks since 2000 and has accomplished more than € 9.4 million research grant income in the last decade.

What is polarized lightin physics

Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University Vienna, General Hospital Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Polarizedand unpolarizedlight

Wolfgang Drexler received his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1991 and 1995, respectively, at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. From 2006 to 2009 he was a Full Professor of Biomedical Imaging at the School of Optometry and Vision Sciences at Cardiff University, Wales, UK. Since 2010 he is an Honorary Distinguished Professor at Cardiff University, UK. Since October 2009 he is a Full Professor of Medical Physics and the Head of the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria and is also Director of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Laser Development and their Application in Medicine since 2011.

He spent 2 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, received the Austrian START Award from the Austrian Science Fund in 2001, the COGAN Award from ARVO in 2007, the Fear Memorial Award in 2008, the Gabriel Coscas Medal in 2009, the EVER Acta Silver Medal in 2010, the DOG’sInnovator’s Award in 2011 as well as the Edridge Green Medal from The Royal College of Ophthalmologists in 2012.

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

Topics: Medical and Radiation Physics, Ophthalmology, Biological and Medical Physics, Biophysics, Classical Electrodynamics, Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering, Measurement Science and Instrumentation

“Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an exciting, comprehensive, perspicuous and highly recommended book that describes the theory, the instrumentation and the disparate applications of OCT. … The theory and the instruments are fully described, the multitude of multicolored figures are clear, and the references are extensive … .” (Barry R. Masters, Optics and Photonic News, January, 2016)