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Optical polarization

About: Optical polarization is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 13992 publications have been published within this topic receiving 244284 citations.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Mueller matrices provide a complete characterization of the optical polarization properties of biological tissue and revealed some tissue structures that are not perceptible with standard OCT.
Abstract: Mueller matrices provide a complete characterization of the optical polarization properties of biological tissue. A polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (OCT) system was built and used to investigate the optical polarization properties of biological tissues and other turbid media. The apparent degree of polarization (DOP) of the backscattered light was measured with both liquid and solid scattering samples. The DOP maintains the value of unity within the detectable depth for the solid sample, whereas the DOP decreases with the optical depth for the liquid sample. Two-dimensional depth-resolved images of both the Stokes vectors of the backscattered light and the full Mueller matrices of biological tissue were measured with this system. These polarization measurements revealed some tissue structures that are not perceptible with standard OCT.

258 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a new optical scheme that eliminates birefringence effects on the polarization state of a beam which retraces its path was proposed. But it does not control the exit polarization state but it removes the bireringence change effect at its source.

257 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A novel free space optical (FSO) system that represents a significant breakthrough in the area of FSO communications is reviewed, which is tested in a double-pass FSO link between two buildings in Pisa, Italy.
Abstract: We review a novel free space optical (FSO) system that represents a significant breakthrough in the area of FSO communications. The system encompasses a pair of novel terminals: these allow direct and transparent optical connection to common single mode fibers and include a dedicated electronic control unit that effectively tracks the signal beam wandering due to atmospheric turbulence and mechanical vibrations. Further improvement in the signal power stabilization is achieved by means of saturated EDFAs. These solutions allow to realize a new FSO system, which is tested in a double-pass FSO link between two buildings in Pisa, Italy. When the terminals are fed by common WDM signals they allow enough power budget and margins to support a record high capacity transmission (32times40 Gbit/s), with a enormous improvement of stability (six hours with no error burst). During day-long transmission, the system behavior has been deeply characterized to correlate any increase of bit error ratio (BER) to the FSO control parameters.

252 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, optical alignment and rotation of individual plasmonic nanostructures with lengths from tens of nanometers to several micrometers using a single beam of linearly polarized near-infrared laser light was demonstrated.
Abstract: We demonstrate optical alignment and rotation of individual plasmonic nanostructures with lengths from tens of nanometers to several micrometers using a single beam of linearly polarized near-infrared laser light. Silver nanorods and dimers of gold nanoparticles align parallel to the laser polarization because of the high long-axis dipole polarizability. Silver nanowires, in contrast, spontaneously turn perpendicular to the incident polarization and predominantly attach at the wire ends, in agreement with electrodynamics simulations. Wires, rods, and dimers all rotate if the incident polarization is turned. In the case of nanowires, we demonstrate spinning at an angular frequency of ∼1 Hz due to transfer of spin angular momentum from circularly polarized light.

250 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the optical helicity, the optical spin and the ij-infra-zilches in electromagnetic theory and showed that these conserved quantities can be combined to form a new description of the angular momentum associated with optical polarization, analogous to the familiar description of optical energy and linear momentum.
Abstract: We examine the optical helicity, the optical spin and the ij-infra-zilches in electromagnetic theory and show that these conserved quantities can be combined to form a new description of the angular momentum associated with optical polarization: one that is analogous to the familiar description of optical energy and linear momentum. The symmetries of Maxwell's equations that underlie the conservation of our quantities are presented and discussed. We explain that a similar but distinct set of quantities, Lipkin's zilches, describe the 'angular momentum' of the curl of the electromagnetic field, rather than the angular momentum of the electromagnetic field itself.

247 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20221
2021404
2020359
2019318
2018470
2017504