A study of the polarization of the light emitted by incandescent solid and liquid surfaces

Abstract

In spite of the prodigious activity of physicists during the first three quarters of this century in attacking the problems of reflection, refraction, and polarization in all their different phases, both from the side of experiment and that of mathematical theory, the problem of polarization of light by emission seems to have received comparatively little attention. Although the fact that incandescent solids and liquids emit, at oblique angles of emergence, partially polarized light, was discovered more than seventy years ago, it does not appear even to-day to be very generally known. Few, even of the more complete text-books on physics, make any mention of the fact.