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When the incident beam has a -45° linear polarization, its Jones vector is:
The output polarization state is then expressed:
The output light is left-hand circularly polarized.
Above illustrates this case.
Again, the slow axis of the quarter waveplate are aligned with the x axis, and the fast axis of the
QWP is aligned with the y axis of the coordinate system. The input polarization is -45° linear
and it is transformed into a left-hand circular polarization.
The purple vector at the origin again represents the orientation of the incident linearly polarized
light. As for this, there is no phase difference between the x and y axis components of the E
field.
The -45° orientation of the polarization vector means that it is azimuthally rotated.
Propagating through the quarter waveplate causes the component aligned along the slow axis
to add a phase shift of +p/2 with respect to the component aligned along the fast axis. The out-
put light is left-hand circularly polarized and has an E field vector that rotates counterclockwise
when it propagates along the z axis.
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