User talk:AJim

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Re: Faraday effect diagram, you're right about the direction of rotation (I checked in Hecht). I drew it that way because it was easier, not for any good reason. Actually I'm not too happy with how the diagram came out (I don't think it shows the rotation very well),so I'll try altering it and see how it looks. Oh, and welcome to Wikipedia! -- DrBob 18:59, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, this is a lot of fun for me. I like the look of the diagram, especially the color and shading. I would have an easier time if it could show the direction of propagation. For my money, showing the sense of the current flow, rather than the coil itself, as Hecht does, would make it easier to apply the right hand rule to get the B field. Am I right in thinking that the polarizers Hecht shows are essential to the isolator design? That the 45 degree rotation (he implies) means that the reflected wave will be rotated 90 degrees and thus be blocked by the entrance polarizer? The microwave isolator also includes an absorber for the relected wave. In the optical isolator is the dissipation achieved with a dichroic polarizer? AJim 21:13, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do with adding the propagation direction to the diagram - I might make it more like Hecht's diagram to make the polarization direction clearer. I think the coil would obscure things too much, though. Yes, polarizers are necessary for optical isolators, usually polarizing beam splitters on either end. They have adjustments to fiddle with the magnet spacing to get exactly 45° rotation at the wavelength you want. -- DrBob 17:56, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It does not make so pretty a picture, but what I drew to check myself was an end-on view, looking into the source, no coil, just I circulating ccw. The right-hand rule then said that B was in the propagation direction. Then the rotation had to be ccw also from the definition. Perhaps the end-on picture might be a supplement? There is something mnemonic about the current and the rotation being in the same sense anyway. I found the coil distracting myself. I think there is a potential for confusion by introducing the coil helix sense. The real fun, for me, is that I now understand Faraday isolators better. Thank you for that. AJim 22:57, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment :) And you're right, that Sellmeier graph should be micrometres rather than nanometres along the x-axis. I've uploaded a corrected version. Thanks for spotting that. -- DrBob 16:15, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tip (re [[wild pointer). If you're writing code blocks, you don't need to use pre and nowiki wrappers. If you start a line with a single, leading space, you get the effect (edit this page to see the markup)

int
main(void)
{
   return 0;
}

which has the advantage of looking much easier to read in the markup. By the way, K&R-style function declarations might look nice, but we might want to stick to ANSI C ;)

HTH Dysprosia 06:17, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)