Related papers: Three-dimensional coherence matrix and degree of p…
Linear polarimetric transformations of light polarization states by the action of material media are fully characterized by the corresponding Mueller matrices, which contain in an implicit and intricate manner all measurable information on…
We revisit the classification of polarization observables of the cosmic microwave background. There exists a unified approach to the $3 \times 3$ density matrix by which intensity, linear and circular polarization are treated on an equal…
An example of a coherent measurement for the direct evaluation of the degree of polarization of a single-mode optical beam is presented. It is applied to the case of great practical importance where depolarization is caused by polarization…
A simple, self-calibrating, rotating-waveplate polarimeter is largely insensitive to light intensity fluctuations and is shown to be useful for determining the Stokes parameters of light. This study shows how to minimize the in situ…
The degree of optical spatial coherence -a fundamental property of light that describes the mutual correlations between fluctuating electromagnetic fields- has proven challenging to control at the micrometer scale. Here we employ surface…
Optical fields polarized along three dimensions are frequent in optical microscopy and nanophotonics, and yet retrieving their polarization distribution is challenging. We present the experimental implementation of three-dimensional (3D)…
Laser speckle is generated by the multiple interference of light through a disordered medium. Here we study the premise that the speckle pattern retains information about the polarisation state of the incident field. We analytically verify…
Information about the three-dimensional structure of solar magnetic fields is encoded in the polarized spectra of solar radiation by a host of physical processes. To extract this information, solar spectra must be obtained in a variety of…
We review a few useful concepts about polarization measurements in the quantum domain. Using a perfectly general formalism, we show how to build the quantum counterpart of some classical quantities like Stokes parameters and Mueller…
The Stokes formalism of polarization physics has astounding structural parallels with the formalism used for relativity theory in Minkowski spacetime. The structure and symmetry properties of the Mueller matrices are the same as those for…
Singular optics aims to understand and manipulate light's topological defects, pioneered by the discovery that phase vortex lines, strands of destructive interference, naturally occur in scalar wave fields. Monochromatic electromagnetic…
The full sky cosmic microwave background polarization field can be decomposed into `electric' and `magnetic' components. Working in harmonic space we construct magnetic variables that can be measured from observations over only a portion of…
We present configurations of polarimeters which measure the three linear Stokes parameters of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation with a nearly diagonal error matrix, independent of the global orientation of the polarimeters in the…
We introduce an alternative approach to the polarization theory of light. This is based on a set of quantum operators, constructed from two independent bosons, being three of them the $su(1,1)$ Lie algebra generators, and the other one, the…
Analysis of the singularities of the polarization field of CMB, where polarization is equal to zero, is presented. It is found that the classification of the singular points differs from the usual three types known in the ordinary…
A proper set of indices characterizing the polarimetric purity of light and material media is defined from the eigenvalues of the corresponding coherency matrix. A simple and generalizable relation of these indices with the current…
We compute the photon polarization tensor at one-loop order in the presence of a constant and uniform electric field. Our calculation is carried out for arbitrary field strength using the Schwinger proper-time formalism, and we explicitly…
We address the problem of completely characterizing multi-particle states including loss of information to unobserved degrees of freedom. In systems where non-classical interference plays a role, such as linear-optics quantum gates, such…
(Electric) polarization tensors describe part of the leading order term of asymptotic voltage perturbations caused by low volume fraction inhomogeneities of the electrical properties of a medium. They depend on the geometry of the support…
We replace the familiar Stokes vector by a tensor. This allows us to introduce, for example, polar-coordinate components of the Stokes vector. From the tensor we can derive the skyrmion field for mapping the polarization in structured light…