Can photon be polarized?

Photon polarization is the quantum mechanical description of the classical polarized sinusoidal plane electromagnetic wave. An individual photon can be described as having right or left circular polarization, or a superposition of the two.

Is a single photon always circularly polarized?

According to mainstream physics, quantum mechanics : No, a single photon isn’t always circularly polarized.

Can photons have spin 0?

Electrons and quarks (particles of matter) can have a spin of –1/2 or +1/2; photons (particles of light) can have a spin of –1 or +1; and Higgs bosons must have a spin of 0. Though particle spins are tiny, they have an impact on our everyday world. The spin property of photons allows us to create 3D movies.

Is spin the same as polarization?

Mathematically the spin states are like the left and right circularly polarized waves, so their sum and difference are like the x and y polarized waves but one of them shifted by a phase, and the 45 degrees tilted ones really are literal sums and differences of the x and y (in phase) waves.

Does a photon have a direction?

The photons you see have been diffused by the molecules of air. In the vacuum photons won’t change of direction (they go at the speed of light) and you wouldn’t see the beam passing in front of you.

What type of polarization does a photon have?

An individual photon can be described as having right or left circular polarization, or a superposition of the two. Equivalently, a photon can be described as having horizontal or vertical linear polarization, or a superposition of the two.

Is it possible to make unpolarized light?

Certainly you can make unpolarized light, and from that distribution of photons we can always draw individuals for which there is no way to predict their polarization in any basis. But any photon state that you could write down would have some polarization (most likely elliptical,…

Can a wave be circularly polarized in one direction?

Because the polarization of the whole wave requires some correlation in the state of individual photons, a wave may be measured not to be circularly polarized in either direction. But an individual photon is always circularly polarized in one of the directions when the answer to this question is measured.

What is a linear polarization?

Linear polarizations are the simplest nontrivial superpositions of L and R. The absolute value of both coefficients, c L and c R, is the same while the relative phase encodes the axis on which the photon is polarized.