MALUS’S LAW

RAHUL KUMAR PATEL

POLARIZATION
• Polarization is a property applying to transverse waves that specifies
the geometrical orientation of the oscillations.
• In a transverse wave, the direction of the oscillation is transverse to the
direction of motion of the wave, so the oscillations can have different
directions perpendicular to the wave direction.
• The light coming from natural sources like Sun or from an incandescent
lamp are considered as incoherent.
• The electric field of the light wave varies randomly in the plane
perpendicular to the direction in which the wave propagates. The
randomly polarized light is referred as unpolarized light.
• Consider an unpolarized beam of amplitude A and intensity I 0 which is
proportional to the square of the amplitude, as we know, incident on a
polarizer, the incident light have components Ax = A cos and Ay = A
sin along the axis. The  vary randomly as the light is unpolarized.
• Polarizer is a device which allows the light wave with electric vibrations
parallel to the pass-direction to pass through without attenuation and
absorbs the light wave with electric vibrations perpendicular to the
pass-direction.
• Let the pass axis of the polarizer make an angle  with the x-axis.
• The intensity I of the transmitted beam through this polarizer can be
obtained by taking the projection of the components A x and Ay along
the pass-direction. As the intensity is proportional to the amplitude, we
I  ( A cos   A sin  ) 2
have
x y

 A2 (cos  cos   sin  sin  ) 2

 A2 (cos 2  cos 2   sin 2  sin 2   2 cos  sin  sin  cos  )
• Now as the angle  varies randomly, the average value of cos2 , sin2,
cossin are needed to be evaluated.
1
cos  
2

2
1
sin  
2

2
cos  sin   0
• This leads to 1 1 
I  A2  cos 2   sin 2  
2 2 
1
 A2
2
1
 I
2

• The intensity of the transmitted beam is half of the incident unpolarized beam and
this result does not depend on the orientation of the pass direction of the polarizer.
That is independent of the angle alpha.
• The transmitted beam is plane polarized with electric vibrations along the pass
direction of the polarizer.
• If the incident beam is plane polarized with electric vibrations making an
angle  as before but now this angle is fixed with the x axis and the pass
direction of the polarizer makes an angle  with the x axis as before the
intensity of the transmitted beam is again given by the same expression.

I  ( Ax cos   Ay sin  ) 2
 A2 (cos  cos   sin  sin  ) 2
 A2 cos 2 (   )
I  I 0 cos 2 (   )
But no averaging is needed now because of fixed angle.
• The intensity of the transmitted beam varies as the square of the
cosine of the angle - , the angle between the plane of vibration of the
incident beam and the pass direction of the polarizer, working here as
an analyzer. This is called Malus’s law.
• The law stating that the intensity of a beam of plane-polarized light
after passing through a rotatable polarizer varies as the square of the
cosine of the angle through which the polarizer is rotated from the
position that gives maximum intensity.
• Now if a plane-polarized beam (polarized along the x-axis by the
polarizer P1 )is incident on another polarizer (P2) and if this polarizer is
rotated about the beam direction, then the intensity of the emergent
wave will vary according to the above law.
• If the polarizer P2 is rotated in the clockwise direction then the intensity will
increase till the pass-axis of P2 is parallel to the x-axis.
• A further rotation will result in a decrease in intensity till the pass-axis is
perpendicular to the x-axis, where the intensity will be almost zero.
• If we further rotate it, it will pass through a maximum and again a minimum
before it reaches to its original position.
• The emergent light after passing through the polarizer P 2 is now polarized with
the direction of electric vibrations parallel to the pass direction of P 2 working
here as an analyzer.
THANK YOU