The other kind of wave is a polarized wave. Polarized waves are light waves in which the vibrations occur in a single plane. Plane polarized light consists of waves in which the direction of vibration is the same for all waves. In the image above, you can see that a plane polarized light vibrates on only one plane. The process of transforming unpolarized light into polarized light is known as polarization. The devices like the polarizers you see are used for the polarization of light.

Polarizationpolitics

Polarization, in Physics, is defined as a phenomenon caused due to the wave nature of electromagnetic radiation. Sunlight travels through the vacuum to reach the Earth, which is an example of an electromagnetic wave. These waves are called electromagnetic waves because they form when an electric field interacts with a magnetic field. In this article, you will learn about two types of waves, transverse waves and longitudinal waves. You will also learn about polarization and plane polarised light.

Polarizationin Chemistry

The design file used in this particle is attached, please download it here. How to computes Gaussian beam characteristics with a “calculator”

How to quickly compute Gaussian beam characteristics, allowing you key into M2 factor and waist size, and displaying beam data as it propagates surface by surface in your optical system, here we will share this tool.

Transverse waves are waves, in which the movement of the particles in the wave is perpendicular to the direction of motion of the wave.

Here, we’ll look at the Paraxial Gaussian Beam results using 1D Universal Plot to validate the result. This plot shows the computed paraxial Gaussian beam size as a function of the image plane location.

Polarizationcharacteristics

Polarizationin Physics

There are two linear components in the electric field of light that are perpendicular to each other such that their amplitudes are equal, but the phase difference is π/2. The propagation of the occurring electric field will be in a circular motion.

Polarizationexamples

The electric field of light follows an elliptical propagation. The amplitude and phase difference between the two linear components are not equal.

As an laser and optics engineer, we always expect to quickly have the laser beam specs in an system without complicated calculation, here we share a “calculator tool”, paraxial Gaussian beam analysis, which allows you to enter both ideal and mixed mode (M2>1) Gaussian beam and displays beam data as it propagates surface by surface in your optical system.  It is an interactive feature that works as a “calculator” that quickly computes Gaussian beam characteristics. This feature computes ideal and mixed mode Gaussian beam data as a given input beam propagates through the lens system. It requires the definition of the initial input embedded beam properties and its M2 value.  It propagates this embedded beam through the lens system, and at each surface the beam data, including beam size, beam divergence, and waist locations, is computed and displayed in the output window.

Polarizationof light

Knowing the wavelength and the far field divergence angle, the beam waist is calculated to be 0.118 mm, with a Rayleigh range of 69.7 mm. We will model this system using Paraxial Gaussian beam analysis tool so that the beam spot is the smallest at 30 mm away from the laser output.

In this article, we will use the same example described in the article: Can We Use “Ray” To Simulate A He-Ne 632nm Laser Source , let’s recap the system parameters.

Light is the interaction of electric and magnetic fields travelling through space. The electric and magnetic vibrations of a light wave occur perpendicularly to each other. The electric field moves in one direction and the magnetic field in another ‘perpendicular to each other. So, we have one plane occupied by an electric field, another plane of the magnetic field perpendicular to it, and the direction of travel is perpendicular to both. These electric and magnetic vibrations can occur in numerous planes. A light wave that is vibrating in more than one plane is known as unpolarized light. The light emitted by the sun, by a lamp or a tube light are all unpolarised light sources. As you can see in the image below, the direction of propagation is constant, but the planes on which the amplitude occurs are changing.

In the plot, you can see the smallest Gaussian beam size 0.014 occurs at a back focal distance around 30 mm, which turns out to be very close to waist size 0.0137mm in the paraxial Gaussian beam calculator. Please take note:  The limit is that the calculation of Gaussian beam parameters is based upon paraxial ray data, therefore the results may not be accurate for systems which have large aberrations, or those cannot be described by paraxial optics, such as non-rotationally symmetric systems. This feature also ignores all apertures, and assumes the Gaussian beam propagates well within the apertures of all the lenses in the system.