The switchable polarization rotators are of prime importance in many modern optical applications, such as displays, spatial light modulators, and beam deflectors. Such a rotator can be designed with a half-wave electrically controlled nematic cell with antiparallel alignment at the two boundary plates. However, this rotator can operate only in a narrow spectral band where the half-wave conditio...

We present a design of a polarization converter between linear, circular, and elliptic accomplished with an on-chip high-Q dielectric microring resonator. Nonlinear polarization switching can be accomplished at modest input intensities because of the high-intensity compression in the ring. We predict an optical bistability effect making the polarization of the transmitted light dependent on its...

Microvillar photoreceptors are intrinsically capable of detecting the orientation of e-vector of linearly polarized light. They provide most invertebrates with an additional sensory channel to detect important features of their visual environment. However, polarization sensitivity (PS) of photoreceptors may lead to the detection of polarization-induced false colors and intensity contrasts. Most...

This paper will describe the Marshall Space Flight Center's Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph (SUMI) sounding rocket program, with emphasis on the polarization characteristics of the VUV optics and their spectral, spatial and polarization resolution. SUMI's first flight (7/30/2010) met all of its mission success criteria and this paper will describe the data that was acquired with emphasis on the ...

In this paper, we investigate variation of the wavelength, intensity and polarization of the self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots emission by microphotoluminescence spectroscopy at the liquid helium temperature. The microcavity wafer sample is grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and chemically etched into the micropillar structure (with elliptical cross section - long and short axis 2µm×1.5µ...

A rigorous analysis of digital coherent optical modulation schemes using the state of polarization as the modulating parameter is presented, which permits to obtain the exact performance of all the polarization-based modulation schemes proposed in the literature so far, including a differential demodulation scheme, named DPOLSK, which does not require either electrooptic or electronic polarizat...

The CMB temperature power spectrum offers ambiguous evidence for the existence of horizonscale power in the primordial power spectrum due to uncertainties in spatial curvature and the physics of cosmic acceleration as well as the observed low quadrupole. Current polarization data from WMAP provide evidence for horizon-scale power that is robust to these uncertainties. Polarization on the larges...