Physics Help Forum Equation for linearly polarized light

 Oct 20th 2009, 02:05 PM #1 Junior Member   Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 21 Equation for linearly polarized light I need to write an equation for a beam of polarized light traveling alone in the xy-plane 45 degrees from the x-axis. The plane of vibration corresponds to the xy-plane and the angular frequency is $\displaystyle \omega$ . Given the initial conditions: at t=0 the E-field at the origin is zero, normally, if the wave is propagating in the z-direction I would write: $\displaystyle \overrightarrow{E}=E_0\left [ \hat{i}sin(kz-\omega t)+\hat{j}sin(kz-\omega t) \right ]$ \overrightarrow{E}=E_0\left [ \hat{i}sin(kz-\omega t)+\hat{j}sin(kz-\omega t) \right ] But now the propagation direction has changed, how can I deal with that? Can I just change z to something else like: $\displaystyle \overrightarrow{E}=E_0\left [ \hat{i}sin(k?-\omega t)+\hat{j}sin(k?-\omega t) \right ]$ \overrightarrow{E}=E_0\left [ \hat{i}sin(k?-\omega t)+\hat{j}sin(k?-\omega t) \right ] Something is wrong with my latex, I've typed the codes below what I intended to display. Last edited by synclastica_86; Oct 20th 2009 at 02:08 PM.