The helical description sounds circularly polarized waves.
This bring another question to mind. Anyone know why you are supposed
to use circular polarizers rather than linear polarizers on automatic
cameras. I think this is principally for autofocus SLR's. I find
that even with circular polarizers the meter consistantly underexposes
and find no real benefit to circular over linear (except that somebody
made a lot more money selling me the circular polarizers).