An Illustration: Polarized Light

Joseph March Brom, Frank Rioux

Lecture demonstrations involving polarization of light are presented and discussed from the quantum theoretical point of view. The demonstrations clearly show that only two base states are required to describe the quantum state of a photon and they illustrate an optical analog of the Stern–Gerlach experiment that involved electrons.

N. Andersen, Klaus Bartschat

Gregory D. VanWiggeren, Rajarshi Roy

The fast, irregular, fluctuations of the state of polarization of light output from an erbium doper fiber ring laser are used to communicate digital information. The experiments illustrate the application of a dynamical encoding and information recovery scheme that is robust to perturbations of the communication channel, a standard single mode fiber. A fiber-optic polarization analyzer was used to measure and visualize the polarization dynamics at nanosecond time scales on the Poincaré sphere.

G. Ramachandran, A. R. Usha Devi, N S Saandeep +1 more

Iulia Ghiu, Gunnar G. Bjork, Paulina Marian +1 more

We recall the framework of a consistent quantum description of polarization of light. Accordingly, the degree of polarization of a two-mode state $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\rho}\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}$ of the quantum radiation field can be defined as a distance of a related state ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\rho}\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}}_{b}$ to the convex set of all SU(2)-invariant two-mode states. We explore a distance-type polarization measure in terms of the quantum Chernoff bound and derive its explicit expression. A comparison between the Chernoff and Bures degrees of polarization leads to interesting conclusions for some particular states chosen as illustrative examples.

Osama M. Raisuddin, Suvranu De