SKEDSOFT

Polarization of light by reflection:

Polarization at Brewseter angle: when the angle of incidence is equal to the Breswter angle, then the reflectivity for the p component () is zero. Thus if a randomly polarized light is made to incident at Breswter angle on air-glass interface then the reflected light will be s polarized (Fig 1.).

Fig 1: Generation of polarized light at Brewster's angle.

Change of Polarization by Internal Reflection

Let us consider an interface formed by two dielectric medium as shown in Fig 2 (a),

Fig 2(a)

 light is incident from medium 1 having refractive index n 1 to the medium of refractive index n 2 , such that n 1 >n 2 .Recalling the snell's law eq 1 from lecture 2, module 13, the angle of transmission will keep on increasing as the angle of incidence increases. At certain angle of incidence , the angle of refraction will be 90 ° given by the condition.                     

                    --------------------------(1)

                   for the angle