The authors describe a dual-mirror 90(∘) twisted periscope arrangement for transporting polarized light in air, wherein a general elliptic polarization state of the light is preserved at all wavelengths. It is experimentally demonstrated that in the wavelength range 400-1000 nm, this arrangement preserves the polarization state fairly well when using either metallic or dielectric mirrors.

Subwavelength-period gratings exhibit a number of interesting polarization-selective properties. We investigate several such phenomena: an "inverse" wire-grid polarizer, which transmits TE light while stopping TM light, a guided-mode resonance filter with an order-of-magnitude difference in the width of the reflectance peak for the two orthogonal states of polarization, a metal-coated silicon g...

We present an idea to generate an arbitrary space-variant vector beam with structured polarization and phase distributions. The vector beams are synthesized from the left- and right-hand polarized light, each carrying different phase distributions. Both the phase and the state of polarization of vector beams can be tailored independently and dynamically by a spatial light modulator.

A time-resolved Monte Carlo technique was used to simulate the propagation of polarized light in turbid media. Calculated quantities include the reflection Mueller matrices, the transmission Mueller matrices, and the degree of polarization (DOP). The effects of the polarization state of the incident light and of the size of scatterers on the propagation of DOP were studied. Results are shown in...

We show that it is possible to generate continuous-wave fields and pulses of polarization squeezed light by sending classical, linearly polarized laser light twice through an atomic sample which causes an optical Faraday rotation of the field polarization. We characterize the performance of the process and we show that an appreciable degree of squeezing can be obtained under realistic physical ...

It has been shown theoretically that a light amplifier working on the physical principle of stimulated emission should achieve optimal quantum cloning of the polarization state of light. We demonstrate close-to-optimal universal quantum cloning of polarization in a standard fiber amplifier for telecom wavelengths. For cloning 1-->2 we find a fidelity of 0.82, the optimal value being 5 / 6=0.83.

We present ultraviolet and visual spectropolarimetry of the interacting binary star b Lyrae, obtained with the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment and the HPOL spectropolarimeter at Pine Blu† Observatory. Our observations span 3 years and cover the wavelength range from 1400 to 10500 Ó, with a resolution of 7.5È16 Detailed broadand narrowband spectropolarimetric analysis allows u...

We present optical spectropolarimetric observations of Type Ic supernova (SN) 2007gr with Subaru telescope at 21 days after the maximum brightness (∼ 37 days after the explosion). Non-zero polarization as high as ∼ 3 % is observed at the absorption feature of Ca ii IR triplet. The polarization of the continuum light is ∼ 0.5% if we assume an interstellar polarization (ISP) with which SN photosp...

We present the design of a 1D polarization contrast retina. The retina employs two parallel, linear arrays of 29 photodiodes as sensing elements. Polarizing material is placed on the focal plane so that each array of photodiodes receives linearly polarized light whose e-vector components are orthogonal. On chip analog subthreshold MOS circuit computes the polarization contrast. We also discuss ...

We studied optical properties of polarized light scattered off a turbid medium. Based on the experimental setup, and using Muller calculus, we developed a model that provided us with optical information of the scattered light like amount of surviving linear polarization and optical rotation of the light after scattering. The scattered light was detected laterally, perpendicular to the direction...