Polarization

Polarization or polarisation may refer to:

In the physical sciences

• Polarization (waves), the ability of waves to oscillate in more than one direction, in particular polarization of light, responsible for example for the glare-reducing effect of polarized sunglasses
  • Polarization (antenna), the state of polarization (in the above sense) of electromagnetic waves transmitted by or received by a radio antenna
• Dielectric polarization, charge separation in insulating materials:
  • Polarization density, volume dielectric polarization
  • Dipolar polarization, orientation of permanent dipoles
  • Ionic polarization, displacement of ions in a crystal
  • Maxwell–Wagner–Sillars polarization, slow long-distance charge separation in dielectric spectroscopy on inhomogeneous soft matter
• Polarization (electrochemistry), a change in the equilibrium potential of an electrochemical reaction
• Concentration polarization, the shift of the electrochemical potential difference across an electrochemical cell from its equilibrium value
• Spin polarization, the degree by which the spin of elementary particles is aligned to a given direction
• Polarizability, an electrical property of atoms or molecules and a separate magnetic property of subatomic particles
  • Polarization function, a feature of some molecular modelling methods
• Photon polarization, the mathematical link between wave polarization and spin polarization
• Vacuum polarization, a process in which a background electromagnetic field produces virtual electron-positron pairs
• Circular polarization of an electromagnetic wave is a polarization state in which, at each point, the electric field of the wave has a constant magnitude but its direction rotates with time at a steady rate in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the wave.

In mathematics

• Polarization of an Abelian variety, in the mathematics of complex manifolds
• Polarization of an algebraic form, a technique for expressing a homogeneous polynomial in a simpler fashion by adjoining more variables
• Polarization identity, expresses an inner product in terms of its associated norm

In the social sciences

• Polarization (economics), an economic process where middle-class jobs disappear more than those at the bottom and the top
• Polarization (psychology), the process whereby a social or political group is divided into opposing sub-groups
• Political polarization, the process by which the public opinion divides and goes to the extremes
• Social polarization
  • Attitude polarization
  • Group polarization
  • Racial polarization, the process whereby a population with varyingly diverse ancestry is divided into distinct, homogenous racial groups

Other

• Polarization (album), an album by American jazz trombonist and composer Julian Priester
• Polarization, in many disciplines, is a tendency to be located close to one of the opposite ends of a continuum

See also

• Polar (disambiguation)
• Polar opposite (disambiguation)
• Polarity (disambiguation)
• Pole (disambiguation)
• Reversal (disambiguation)