Faraday Rotator

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A Farady rotator is made from a non-linear material with an electric current passing either across the light path or along the light path in the crystal. They are used in Ring Lasers and in Faraday Isolators.

A Faraday Rotator rotates light using the Faraday Effect. The degree of rotation is controled by an induced magnetic field. The two main uses for a Faraday Rotator are putting a polarizer in front so that back scatter is rotated and blocked by the polarizer and using them with wave plates to make a ring laser.

Faraday-effect.svg

The plane of linearly polarized light is rotated when a magnetic field is applied parallel to the propagation direction. The empirical angle of rotation is given by:

Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \beta = VBd \!}

Where

  • Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \beta} is the angle of rotation (in radians),
  • Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle B} is the magnetic flux density in the direction of propagation (in teslas),
  • Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle d} is the length of the path (in meters) where the light and magnetic field interact, and
  • Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle V} is the Verdet constant for the material. This empirical proportionality constant (in units of radians per tesla per meter, rad/(T·m)) varies with wavelength and temperature and is tabulated for various materials.