A telescope eyepiece has a turret of five ideal linear polarising filters with…
PHYSICS · Multi-part · Fermi University Physics · Optics & Photonics · Polarisation and anisotropic media · Polarisation and anisotropic media
Optics and Photonics, Ch Polarisation states, polarisers and the Jones and Stokes calculus
Problem
A telescope eyepiece has a turret of five ideal linear polarising filters with transmission axes at 0, 22.5, 45, 67.5 and 90 degrees (equal steps of 22.5 degrees), and unpolarised starlight of irradiance I0 enters from the 0-degree end.
((a)) Find the transmitted irradiance as a fraction of I0.
((b)) State, without repeating the calculation, what the transmitted fraction would tend to if the same 90-degree rotation were spread over a very large number N of equally spaced sheets, and why.