Related papers: Looking to the Blue Sky with Colored Patterns
This work is devoted to the study of solar light that experiences single and multiple scattering in the atmosphere at the twilight time. The work is based on polarimetric observations of the twilight sky that were conducted in 1997 and 2000…
Light Polarization has many technological applications and its discovery was crucial to reveal the transverse nature of the electromagnetic waves. However, despite its fundamental and practical importance, in high school this property of…
A simple experiment is described for the direct determination of the wavelength dependence of the Rayleigh scattering cross section using the classical example of the blue sky.
Polarization is a basic property of light and is fundamentally linked to the internal geometry of a source of radiation. Polarimetry complements photometric, spectroscopic, and imaging analyses of sources of radiation and has made possible…
The direction angle of twilight sky background polarization in the celestial sphere points far from solar vertical is found to depend on the ratio of single and multiple scattering contributions. The polarization direction behavior during…
A measure of the degree of polarization for the three-dimensional polarization matrix (coherence matrix) of an electromagnetic field is proposed, based on Rayleigh scattering. The degree of polarization, due to dipole scattering of the…
In undergraduate optics courses, diffraction gratings are studied extensively, generally within the scalar approximation. When the vector nature of light is taken into account, so-called polarization diffraction gratings have been proposed,…
The polarization state of starlight reflected by a planetary atmosphere uniquely reveals coverage, particle size, and composition of aerosols as well as changing cloud patterns. It is not possible to obtain a comparable level of detailed…
X-ray polarimetry is now providing a new way to look at the high energy sky. The addition of two observables, polarization fraction and angle, reveals crucial new information on the structure of accretion flows and magnetic fields in…
We investigate the polarization patterns from the moonlit sky as observed from the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal. The moonlit sky background can be significant in astronomical observations and thus be a source of…
Polarimetric observations of the twilight sky are effective for the investigations of scattering properties of the atmosphere at different altitudes. Modern computer technique allows to reduce the influence of multiple scattering on the…
The light received by source stars in microlensing events may be significantly polarized if both an efficient photon scattering mechanism is active in the source stellar atmosphere and a differential magnification is therein induced by the…
Structural coloration by Rayleigh scattering is widespread in nature and holds a prominent place in various art objects over a broad period of time. Beyond the common statement that Rayleigh scattering is the primary mechanism behind the…
The study of anomalous electromagnetic emission in the sky is the basis of indirect searches for dark matter. It is also a powerful tool to constrain the radiative decay of active neutrinos. Until now, quantitative analyses have focused on…
Partial polarization is the manifestation of the correlation between two mutually orthogonal transverse field components associated with a light beam. We show both theoretically and experimentally that the origin of this correlation can be…
In recent decades, the relevance of polarimetry in planetary sciences and astronomy has increased rapidly. Polarization is a fundamental property of light and can be modified by any scattering event. As such, polarization yields additional…
Scattering processes in the atmospheres of planets cause characteristic features that can be particularly well observed in polarisation. For planet Earth, both molecular and scattering by small particles imprint specific signatures in its…
Polarized light microscopy provides unique opportunities for analyzing the molecular order in man-made and natural materials, including biological structures inside living cells, tissues, and whole organisms. 20 years ago, the LC-PolScope…
We show that the polarization state of coherent light propagating through an optically thick multiple-scattering medium, can be controlled by wavefront shaping, i.e. by controlling only the spatial phase of the incoming field with a spatial…
A multilayered particle is illuminated by plane acoustic or electromagnetic waves of one or several frequencies. We consider the inverse scattering problem for the identification of the layers and of the refraction coefficients of the…