POLARIZATION OF LIGHT BY HALF-WAVE PLATE

A wave plate or retarder is an optical device that alters the polarization state of a light beam traveling through it. In the present setup, the diode laser light passes through polarizer to produce linearly polarized light. It then passes through the half wave plate L/2. The L/2 plate produces linear polarised light. For different angles of the L/2 plate with respect to optic axis only the polarisation plane changes. The maximum and minimum are not changed which can be investigated with the analyser over the range -90 to +90 degrees.