Colorado Triple Nine Society
Meets on third Saturday of odd-numbered months
Next Gathering: Saturday, May 20, 2006, 6:30 pm
Home of Richard Juday and Darcy Temple
Program
The degree of polarization of a light is described by the correlation between orthogonal
polarization components of that light. The general form of polarized light is elliptical,
and "orthogonal" generally has a different meaning than the familiar vertical and horizontal
linear components. Another special case of orthogonal polarization is right- and left-hand
circularly polarized light. The meaning of "orthogonal" is that light in orthogonal polarization
states does not interfere; that is, the intensity of the sum of such lights is the sum of their
individual intensities. The manipulation of fully polarized light is well characterized by the
Jones formalism, in which complex basis vectors are chosen for their orthogonality and matrices
with complex elements describe the action of waveplates, polarizers/analyzers, etc. The Meuller
formalism is a higher-dimension matrix and vector system that describes non-polarized and
partially-polarized light, but it will be mentioned only in passing (owing to the personal
interests of the speaker, not because of any lesser actual importance). We'll talk about
some sources of polarized light, and some familiar applications will be discussed.
For the technical background of the speaker, see www.richard-juday.net.
The technical aspects of the talk will be drawn from his recent "Correlation
Pattern Recognition" that he wrote with two co-authors, published by
Cambridge University Press in December 2005.
Colorado TNS is the most centrally located, most active
(regular bimonthly meetings), from the smartest contiguous state (highest
per capita TNS membership: http://estival.com/tns/TNSstats.htm;
DC is not a state), most liberal, and the best looking (see pictures below) TNS
chapter in the Universe.
Pictures from Past Gatherings
Colorado TNS featured in the Denver Post!
4042 Hawthorne Circle, Longmont (directions, maps)
Bring a snack or beverage to share.
Dr. Richard Juday will talk on statistical optics, a subset of which discipline
is polarized light.
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March 31, 2006 - March 18, 2006 - January 2006 - October 2005 - September 2005 - August 2005 - June 2005 - April 2005 - February 2005 - November 2004 - November 2003 - August 2003 - May 2003