Unpolarized light is light with a random, time-varying polarization.
Natural light, like most other common sources of visible light, is produced independently by a large number of atoms or molecules whose emissions are uncorrelated.
Unpolarized light can be produced from the incoherent combination of vertical and horizontal linearly polarized light, or right- and left-handed circularly polarized light.
Conversely, the two constituent linearly polarized states of unpolarized light cannot form an interference pattern, even if rotated into alignment (Fresnel–Arago 3rd law).
A so-called depolarizer acts on a polarized beam to create one in which the polarization varies so rapidly across the beam that it may be ignored in the intended applications.
Conversely, a polarizer acts on an unpolarized beam or arbitrarily polarized beam to create one which is polarized.
Unpolarized light can be described as a mixture of two independent oppositely polarized streams, each with half the intensity. Light is said to be partially polarized when there is more power in one of these streams than the other. At any particular wavelength, partially polarized light can be statistically described as the superposition of a completely unpolarized component and a completely polarized one. One may then describe the light in terms of the degree of polarization and the parameters of the polarized component. That polarized component can be described in terms of a Jones vector or polarization ellipse. However, in order to also describe the degree of polarization, one normally employs Stokes parameters to specify a state of partial polarization.
The transmission of plane waves through a homogeneous medium are fully described in terms of Jones vectors and 2×2 Jones matrices. However, in practice there are cases in which all of the light cannot be viewed in such a simple manner due to spatial inhomogeneities or the presence of mutually incoherent waves. So-called depolarization, for instance, cannot be described using Jones matrices.
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Unpolarized light is light with a random, time-varying polarization. Natural light, like most other common sources of visible light, is produced independently by a large number of atoms or molecules whose emissions are uncorrelated. Unpolarized light can be produced from the incoherent combination of vertical and horizontal linearly polarized light, or right- and left-handed circularly polarized light. Conversely, the two constituent linearly polarized states of unpolarized light cannot form an interference pattern, even if rotated into alignment (Fresnel–Arago 3rd law).
In optics, polarized light can be described using the Jones calculus, discovered by R. C. Jones in 1941. Polarized light is represented by a Jones vector, and linear optical elements are represented by Jones matrices. When light crosses an optical element the resulting polarization of the emerging light is found by taking the product of the Jones matrix of the optical element and the Jones vector of the incident light. Note that Jones calculus is only applicable to light that is already fully polarized.
In electrodynamics, linear polarization or plane polarization of electromagnetic radiation is a confinement of the electric field vector or magnetic field vector to a given plane along the direction of propagation. The term linear polarization (French: polarisation rectiligne) was coined by Augustin-Jean Fresnel in 1822. See polarization and plane of polarization for more information. The orientation of a linearly polarized electromagnetic wave is defined by the direction of the electric field vector.
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