QUANTITATIVE STUDY ON POLARIZATION CHARACTERISTICS OF LIGHT

Light has four-dimensional properties of frequency (spectrum), intensity, phase, and polarization. The human eye is not sensitive to the polarization of light, so instruments are needed to measure polarization information, which involves intensity measurement. In this paper, the classical method, Jones matrix method, and interferometric method are adopted to quantify the light intensity of different types of polarized light passing through a polarizer, and to derive the quantitative relationship between the light intensity of linearly polarized light, elliptically polarized light and circularly polarized light passing through a polarizer and the direction of the polarizer transmittance. The theoretical calculation results are verified by experiments to establish a quantitative connection between polarization characteristics and light intensity, and the effects of the rotation of waveplates and polarizer on the light intensity are analyzed in depth.