Unpolarised light in air is incident on a flat fused-silica surface ( ) at .

PHYSICS · Multi-part · Fermi University Physics · Optics & Photonics · Polarisation and anisotropic media · Polarisation and anisotropic media

What an Instrument Can See, Ch Polarisation as a statistical object: coherency and Mueller matrices

Problem

Unpolarised light in air is incident on a flat fused-silica surface (

n=1.46

) at

50^\circ

. ((a)) Using the Fresnel coefficients from chapter 6 (Snell's law, then

r_s

and

r_p

), find the angle of transmission and the two reflection coefficients

r_s

and

r_p

for this interface. ((b)) Write the boundary's Jones matrix

\mathbf J_{\mathrm{refl}}=\operatorname{diag}(r_s,r_p)

, and hence the two reflectances

\mathcal R_s=r_s^2

and

\mathcal R_p=r_p^2

. ((c)) For unpolarised incident light,

S_{\mathrm{in}}=(1,0,0,0)

, the reflected beam has Stokes vector

S_{\mathrm{out}}=\tfrac12(\mathcal R_s+\mathcal R_p,\ \mathcal R_s-\mathcal R_p,\ 0,\ 0)

. Find the fraction of the incident power reflected and the degree of polarisation of the reflected beam.