Monochromatic plane waves and their polarization states

1 Monochromatic plane waves and their polarization states 

When a monochromatic plane light wave is propagating in a homogeneous isotropic medium, only the electric field is needed to characterize it, because the other quantities can be calculated from the electric field. The electric field is a vector and generally has the form 

When the propagation direction is along the z axis, the real electric field has two components (along the x and y axes) [3 ]  

Ax and Ay are positive numbers representing the amplitudes. Sx and 5y are the phases and are defined in the range -7c Si 7t (i= 1,2). The important quantity is the phase difference defined by 

5 is also defined in the range -k 8 k. We will show that only two parameters are needed to specify the polarization state of a beam. One of the ways to specify the polarization state is the ratio AJAx and phase difference 8. 

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