Generation of Spatially Varying Polarization by Interference with Polarized Light

Interferometry is an important technique for optical metrology. As an example, a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with coherent laser source is build up in VirtualLab Fusion. Particularly in this example, two polarizers are inserted to control the polarization states of the two interfering beams. By rotating one polarizer, the changes in the interference pattern is visualized, and as a result, spatially varying polarization is generated.