Question:

When ordinary light is made incident on a quarter wave plate, the emergent light is

Updated On: Jul 7, 2022
  • linearly polarised
  • circularly polarised
  • unpolarised
  • elliptically polarised
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The Correct Option is D

Solution and Explanation

A quarter-wave plate is basically used for the elliptical polarization of the unpolarized light incident over it. The quarter-wave plate produces the electric field at the various angle about the axis of the light and thereby making the light elliptically polarized. In case the electric field are at an angle of $90^{\circ}$ from one another, it is a special case of the circularly polarized light.
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Concepts Used:

Wave Optics

  • Wave optics are also known as Physical optics which deal with the study of various phenomena such as polarization, interference, diffraction, and other occurrences where ray approximation of geometric optics cannot be done. Thus, the section of optics that deals with the behavior of light and its wave characteristics is known to be wave optics.
  • In wave optics, the approximation is carried out by utilizing ray optics for the estimation of the field on a surface. Further, it includes integrating a ray-estimated field over a mirror, lens, or aperture for the calculation of the transmitted or scattered field.
  • Wave optics stands as a witness to a famous standoff between two great scientific communities who devoted their lives to understanding the nature of light. Overall, one supports the particle nature of light; the other supports the wave nature.
  • Sir Isaac Newton stood as a pre-eminent figure that supported the voice of particle nature of light, he proposed a corpuscular theory which states that “light consists of extremely light and tiny particles, called corpuscles which travel with very high speeds from the source of light to create a sensation of vision by reflecting on the retina of the eye”.