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Re: POLARIZATION



Leigh Palmer says:

I'm afraid I am bewildered. Perhaps someone who is not can appreciate
Brian's point(s) and respond.

If I understand Brian, he is thinking this:
Photons have a spin of either +1 or -1. Presumably these correspond to
right-hand and left-hand polarization. Therefore these are 'more basic',
and you can only get linear polarization by combining 2 photons (one of
each type).

If I am correct, then what he is forgeting is that in the quantum world,
there is no need for a given particle to be in an eigenstate of any
particular spin operator. A single photon can be (|+1> + |-1>)/sqrt(2);
i.e., it still has total spin 1, but it's spin component is indeterminant.

It's sort of what Leigh was cautioning against, but in reverse. Rather
than taking components of a photon to be real, it's missing some component
combinations that *are* real.

--
--James McLean
jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu
post doc
UC San Diego, Chemistry