Waveplate

Common card · No. 355239

A waveplate or retarder is an optical device that alters the polarization state of a light wave travelling through it. Two common types of waveplates are the half-wave plate, which rotates the polarization direction of linearly polarized light, and the quarter-wave plate, which converts between different elliptical polarizations (such as the special case of converting from linearly polarized light to circularly polarized light and vice versa.) Waveplates are constructed out of a birefringent material (such as quartz or mica, or even plastic), for which the index of refraction is different for light that is linearly polarized along one or the other of two certain perpendicular crystal axes. The behavior of a waveplate (that is, whether it is a half-wave plate, a quarter-wave plate, etc.) depends on the thickness of the crystal, the wavelength of light, and the variation of the index of refraction. By appropriate choice of the relationship between these parameters, it is possible to introduce...

Read on Wikipedia · Image CC BY-SA 3.0