Change in Speaker for April Session

[Germer, Thomas A. Dr. (Fed)]

The next speaker in the Henri Poincaré Webinar Series on Optical Polarization and Related Phenomena has changed. Our original speaker, Robert Cameron from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, had to delay his presentation, "Polarisation gratings and their use in chiral analysis", until the September session (September 27 at 2100 UTC).

 

We have recruited Oriol Arteaga from the University of Barcelona to present in his place:

 

Phase, polarization and retarders: from Fresnel-Arago interference laws to Pancharatnam's geometric phase

 

Oriol Arteaga

University of Barcelona

 

Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 400 UTC

(Note that this is on Monday evening in the Western Hemisphere)

 

Register at: https://spie-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/4016476348223/WN_1QkP0VHESEaSEoYIxdc7nQ

 

Abstract: This presentation will look back into two historical experiments that made revolutionary steps for understanding the interference of polarized beams of light, but that are often omitted in textbooks of current use. The first experiment is from the early XIXth century and served Fresnel and Arago to define their laws of interference. The second experiment is from mid-XXth century when S. Pancharatnam pioneered the unintuitive concept of geometric phase to explain the results of his apparently simple interference experiments in crystals. Curiously, the connection between Fresnel and Pancharatnam does not stop in the interference experiments, and they both provided the best designs for achromatic retarders today available.

 

Biography: Oriol Arteaga is a Ramon y Cajal fellow in the Department of Applied Physics at University of Barcelona. His research interests are related to the study of the interaction between polarized light and matter, especially with experimental techniques such as polarimetry and ellipsometry. Optical activity is one of his main topics of research, and he has studied it for organic compounds, crystals, and metamaterials. Oriol received his Ph.D. (2010) in physics at the University of Barcelona and he was a postdoctoral researcher at New York University, USA, and École Polytechnique, France.

 

We are looking forward to Dr. Arteaga’s talk, and apologize for the change in plans.

 

Regards,

 

Thomas Germer