This article is cited in 4 papers

100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF V L GINZBURG. FROM THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS

V L Ginzburg's helical elliptically polarized modes and their application

G. B. Malykin

Federal Research Center, Institute of Applied Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod

Abstract: In 1943, V L Ginzburg derived a simple and elegant solution to the polarization optics problem when a linear birefringent medium is uniformly twisted along the optical axis. In a torsion-comoving coordinate frame, mutually orthogonal polarization eigenmodes, i.e., helical modes, of such an optical medium are characterized by two ellipses with the electric field vector of light bypassed in the opposite sense. Current applications of V L Ginzburg's theory are reviewed.

Keywords: polarization modes, helical system of coordinates, history of physics.

PACS: 01.65.+g, 41.20.Jb, 42.25.Lc

Received: April 14, 2016
Revised: May 23, 2016
Accepted: November 11, 2016

DOI: 10.3367/UFNr.2016.11.037984

 English version: Physics–Uspekhi, 2016, 59:12, 1245–1248

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