What is a Waveplate?
While not actually a polarizing element, waveplates affect the polarization of light by using a birefringent material to differentially delay waves with their polarization oriented in two orthogonal directions called the slow axis and fast axis. Among their capabilities are that a 1/4 wave waveplate can be used to convert linear to circular polarized light and vice-versa and a Half Wave Plate (HWP) can be used to rotate a linearly polarized beam by an arbitrary angle. Waveplates must be designed for a specific wavelength. They may be classified as zeroth order or multiple order. A multiple order waveplate has a total slow-axis retardation of some (unspecified) number of integers plus 1/4 or 1/2. A zero order (or 0th order) waveplate has a total retardation of exactly the specified phase (e.g., 1/2 wave). But such a waveplate would have to be extremely thin and fragile.
While not actually a polarizing element, waveplates affect the polarization of light by using a birefringent material to differentially delay waves with their polarization oriented in two orthogonal directions called the slow axis and fast axis. Among their capabilities are that a 1/4 wave waveplate can be used to convert linear to circular polarized light and vice-versa and a Half Wave Plate (HWP) can be used to rotate a linearly polarized beam by an arbitrary angle. Waveplates must be designed for a specific wavelength. They may be classified as zeroth-order or multiple-order. A multiple-order waveplate has a total slow-axis retardation of some(unspecified) number of integers plus 1/4 or 1/2. A zeroth-order (or 0th-order) waveplate has a total retardation of exactly the specified phase (e.g., 1/2 wave). But such a waveplate would have to be extremely thin and fragile. So, most commercial zeroth-order waveplates are made by combining two multiple order plates of very slightly differen
Related Questions
- Is there a significant difference between these waveplate configurations? In other words, why chose one configuration over another?
- If I use an amplitude modulator as an electronically variable waveplate, how much wavefront distortion is there?
- Can I use the amplitude modulator as a rotating fixed waveplate?
