The Brewster's law helps in analyzing the polarization of reflected ray when light is refracted at say air/water interface. But how can we know the polarization state of the reflected ray when light strikes an opaque metal surface ?
Agnivo Gosai This thread may help https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/polarization-change-upon-reflection.175337/
The term "ramdomly polarized light" is unclear. One should rather consider light polarization using Stokes formalism and the degree of polarization of light(DOP) that is a value between zero and one.
The DOP will not change after reflection on an Al mirror.
Thus a fully unpolarized light will remain fully unpolarized after reflection.
Other cases (partially or fully polarized) will generally lead to changes in polarization orientation after reflection on Al. Fresnel equations should be sufficient to estimate these changes.
This looks like it should be helpful
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/599043?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
- Badges
- Science topic