Home | About Journal | Web Links | E-mail Alerts | RSS RSS Icon | Browse
Previous Article Next Article

Nonquantum Entanglement Resolves a Basic Issue in Polarization Optics

Source: Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 023901 (2010); doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.023901

Published 13 January 2010

PACS
PUBLICATION DATA
Publisher:
AIP is a member of CrossRef APS
B. N. Simon,1 S. Simon,2 F. Gori,3 M. Santarsiero,3 R. Borghi,4 N. Mukunda,5 and R. Simon6
1Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras, Chennai 600 036, India
2Department of Computer Science, Womens Christian College, Chennai 600 006, India
3Dipartimento di Fisica, Universit Roma Tre and CNISM, I-00146 Rome, Italy
4Dipartimento di Elettronica Applicata, Universit Roma Tre and CNISM, I-00146 Rome, Italy
5Centre for High Energy Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India
6The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Tharamani, Chennai 600 113, India
The issue raised in this Letter is classical, not only in the sense of being nonquantum, but also in the sense of being quite ancient: which subset of 44 real matrices should be accepted as physical Mueller matrices in polarization optics? Nonquantum entanglement or inseparability between the polarization and spatial degrees of freedom of an electromagnetic beam whose polarization is not homogeneous is shown to provide the physical basis to resolve this issue in a definitive manner. ©2010 The American Physical Society
History: Received 26 June 2009; revised 5 December 2009; published 13 January 2010
Permalink: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v104/e023901
ADVERTISEMENT