Faraday Rotator

From HoloWiki - A Holography FAQ
Revision as of 20:55, 27 May 2013 by Jsfisher (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search
Faraday-effect.svg

A Faraday rotator is an optical device that rotates the polarization of light due to the Faraday effect, which in turn is based on a magneto-optic effect. The Faraday rotator works because one polarization of the input light is in ferromagnetic resonance with the material which causes its phase velocity to be higher than the other.

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.

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.