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closing discussion on Faraday isolators



Uh, remember maybe a month ago I posed a puzzle about Faraday isolators?
These are one-way light valves and the question was why I can't use one to
violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics - i.e., a sample can radiate away all
its energy but since it's behind this one-way mirror it doesn't receive any
radiation back.

Well, Jim Marsh dug up a reference to this in Wood's optics book and that
sent me looking up a paper by Rayleigh in Nature in which he discusses this
very puzzle.

I have typed all these references along with some introductory and
concluding remarks into the following Web page:

http://www.uwf.edu/~cmungan/Faraday.html

It could be boiled down into a nice homework problem. I also end with a few
parting questions some of you might be able to answer.

Well, have fun reading the above document if you're interested! Carl

Dr. Carl E. Mungan, Assistant Professor http://www.uwf.edu/~cmungan/
Dept. of Physics, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514-5751
office: 850-474-2645 (secretary -2267, FAX -3323) email: cmungan@uwf.edu