ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the classical description of the polarization of monochromatic light. It shows cinverse equations for transformations of the polarization ellipse. The chapter provides basic optical schematics for generating and analyzing any polarization states. A linear polarizer is a device that creates a linear polarization state from an arbitrary input. A linear retarder is a polarization element designed to produce a specified phase difference between two perpendicular linear polarization components of the incident beam without altering the intensity of the beam appreciably. It conserves the polarization of incident beam having either of two particular linear polarizations but alters the polarization of other types of beams. Polarization of the beam after the polarizer is linear and horizontal. Advantage of the computation with the polarization ellipse is that the technique does not require employing matrix algebra and complex numbers, and it explicitly shows a transformation of the polarization by each optical element.
