Observations of a pulsar, consisting of a dead star spinning 600 times a second, and feasting on a stellar companion reveal ...

Photonics is the study of the generation, detection, and manipulation of light waves in the form of photons. One interesting property of light is polarization, defined by its electric and magnetic ...

Gravitational waves can rotate the polarization of light, providing an indirect means of detection. Nevertheless, this gravitational radiation would affect any light passing through, curling its ...

An international team of astronomers has uncovered new evidence to explain how pulsing remnants of exploded stars interact ...

Scientists already knew that light waves have an electric field that can rotate as they propagate, which is known as the polarization property of light, and that light waves carry momentum in their ...

Polarization of photons plays a key role in quantum optics and light-matter interactions, however, it is difficult to control in nanostructures. Here scientists reveal polarization control of ...

A new and quicker way of modulating the polarization of light pulses has been unveiled by researchers in the UK. The technique uses a second laser pulse to control polarization and could be used in a ...

So light waves can go up and down but they can all also go side to side and diagonally. And the direction that the electric field waves is called the polarization of the light wave.

Circular polarization happens when light behaves as a two-dimensional transverse wave; it is distinct from linear polarization microwaves. Linear polarization vs circular polarization.

Physicists at Stevens Institute of Technology use a 350-year-old theorem that explains the workings of pendulums and planets to reveal new properties of light waves.

In turn, these microscopic currents induce a phenomenon called Zeeman splitting: light waves with right-handed circular polarization (an electric field that rotates clockwise) interact with these ...

Wave nature of light, mathematics of wave motion, electromagnetic theory of light propagation, reflection and refraction, Fresnel coefficients, polarization, interference, Young's experiment, fringe ...