optical telecommunications tagged posts

Light from an optical fiber illuminates the metasurface, is scattered in four different directions, and the intensities are measured by the four detectors. From this measurement the state of polarization of light is detected. Credit: Capasso Lab/Harvard SEAS

What do astrophysics, telecommunications and pharmacology have in common? Each of these fields relies on polarimeters – instruments that detect the direction of the oscillation of electromagnetic waves, ie polarization of light.

When light is reflected or scattered off an object, its polarization changes and measuring that change reveals a lot of information. Astrophysicists, for example, use polarization measurements to analyze the surface of distant, or to map the giant magnetic fields spanning our galaxy...