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Impact of polarization on interference pattern formation

  • 29 July 2022
  • 3 replies
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Hello everyone,

I have modelled a really basic system in order to see the impact of polarization on interference pattern formation. 
This system uses 2 sources of different polarizations interfering on a detector.
The variation of the input polarizations states (linear and elliptical or right circular and left circular for instance) seems to have no impact at all. Is it normal? 
Because in theory, the contrast should vary. Is Zemax reliable for that kind of polarization analysis? Or is my setup wrong in a way?

Hope my questions were clear. The system is in the attached file.

Best regards, 

Marie Fournier

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Best answer by Mark.Nicholson 1 August 2022, 18:13

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Hello everyone, 

I finally understood why the system was not working. This is simply because the detector viewer polarisation mode (parameter 16)  was not on. My problem now is that the software doesn’t take into account the interactions between the different polarization sources. For instance, if we select the polarization flag number 4 (for the detector rectangle) with Jx=1 for the first source and Jy=1 for the second source the interferences are still here. But in theory, 2 sources of polarization state orthogonal to each other should not produces any interference! 

So maybe I didn't set another parameter, or maybe this is just the way Zemax deals with interferences and polarization?

Can you help me with that?

Thanks a lot!

Best regards,

Marie

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I think that’s a limitation of OS, Marie. Polarization is ignored in the coherent sum calculation.

Ok, thank you Mark

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