Related papers: Measuring Optical Activity with Unpolarised Light:…
We performed an integrated optical polarization survey of 70 nearby galaxies to study the relationship between linear polarization and galaxy properties. To date this is the largest survey of its kind. The data were collected at McDonald…
The PVLAS experiment operates an ellipsometer which embraces a superconducting dipole magnet and can measure ellipticity and rotation induced by the magnetic field onto linearly polarized light. The sensitivity of the instrument is about…
We present the results of a systematic observational campaign designed to search for microvariability in the optical polarization of BL Lac objects. We have observed a sample formed by 8 X-ray-selected and 10 radio-selected sources, looking…
I propose a new optoelectronic device that completely and instantaneously measures the incident light's polarization for a narrow wavelength band in a single physical pixel. The device has four (or more) quantum-well active regions…
Nonsequential two-photon ionization of inner-shell $np$ subshell of neutral atoms by circularly polarized light is investigated. Detection of subsequent fluorescence as a signature of the process is proposed and the dependence of…
Classical definition of degree of polarization is expressed in quantum domain by replacing intensities through quantum mechanical average values of relevant number operators and is viewed as first generalization of Intensity. This…
Experiments in the field of optomechanics do not yet fully exploit the photon polarization degree of freedom. Here experimental results for an optomechanical interaction in a polarization nondegenerate system are presented and schemes are…
We provide a vivid demonstration of the mechanical effect of transverse spin momentum in an optical beam in free space. This component of the Poynting momentum was previously thought to be virtual, and unmeasurable. Here, its effect is…
Optical-window birefringence is frequently a major obstacle in experiments measuring changes in the polarization state of light traversing a sample under investigation. It can contribute a signal indistinguishable from that due to the…
The ability of NICMOS to perform high accuracy polarimetry is currently hampered by an uncalibrated residual instrumental polarization at a level of 1.2-1.5%. To better quantify and characterize this residual we obtained observations of…
We observed that the polarization state of light after round-trip propagation through a birefringent medium frequently aligns with the employed input polarization state "mirrored" by the horizontal plane of the Poincare sphere. In this…
We develop a weak measurement scheme for measuring orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light based on the global topology in wave function. We introduce the spin-orbit coupling to transform the measurement of OAM to the pre- and postselected…
The determination of the true source polarization given a set of measurements is complicated by the requirement that the polarization always be positive. This positive bias also hinders construction of upper limits, uncertainties, and…
Classical ghost imaging is a correlation-imaging technique in which the image of the object is found through intensity correlations of light. We analyze three different quality parameters, namely the visibility, the signal-to-noise ratio…
Light is produced when a scanning tunneling microscope is used to probe a metal surface. Recent experiments on cobalt utilizing a tungsten tip found that the light is circularly polarized; the sense of circular polarization depends on the…
We have built and tested a compact, low-cost, but very-high-performance astronomical polarimeter based on a continuously rotating half-wave plate and a high-speed imaging detector. The polarimeter is suitable for small telescopes up to ~1 m…
Many optical measurement techniques, such as light scattering from wavelength-scale particles or detecting motion from a surface with an optical lever, encode information in a complex radiation pattern. Extracting all available information…
Optical activity, the power of a medium to rotate the polarization of a light beam, has contributed significantly to molecular structure assessments in stereochemistry, biomolecular science and crystallography. Thus far, it is commonly…
Chirality is a concept that one object is not superimposable on its mirror image by translation and rotation. In particular, chiral plasmonics have been widely investigated due to their excellent optical chiral properties, and have led to…
Polarized X-rays allow for imaging birefringent or dichroic properties of materials with nanometric resolution. To disentangle these properties from the electronic density, either a polarization analyzer or several measurements with…