Conversion of unpolarized light to polarized light with greater than 50% efficiency by photorefractive two-beam coupling

Opt Lett. 2000 Feb 15;25(4):257-9. doi: 10.1364/ol.25.000257.

Abstract

All known polarizers operate through a separation of orthogonal electric field components, one of which is subsequently discarded. As a result, 50% of the unpolarized incident light is wasted in the process of conversion to polarized light. We demonstrate a new method by which we use the optical power in the ordinarily discarded component as the pump to amplify the retained component through photorefractive two-beam coupling to achieve greater than 50% throughput.