The various types of instruments

We shall go through the 7 parameters of the Jones (Mueller) matrices and their relations to various possibles behaviours of the instrument. One of the prominent characteristics of an instrument is its ability to circularly polarise an initially unpolarised or linearly polarised radiation. As the circular polarisation results from a phase shift between the time oscillations of the two components of the radiation field, instruments creating circular polarisation have a complex Jones matrix.

 
• Instruments generating no circular polarisation
• Instruments that induce circular polarisation