ABSTRACT

The Fresnel–Arago laws of interference are five laws describing the interference of polarized light and published in 1819. The fifth law has been systematically forgotten in almost all available references published during the last century, leading to the common, but incorrect, belief that Arago and Fresnel gave only four laws of interference. The fifth law describes the existence of an additional phase of 180${}^{\circ }$, not due to path or speed differences, in linearly polarized beams that undergo certain polarization transformations in double refracting crystals. Two years later, Fresnel provided a complete explanation for this unexpected phase, showing that he had a good understanding of what can unequivocally be pointed out as the first description of a geometric phase in optics.

摘要

菲涅耳-阿拉格干涉定律是描述偏振光干涉的五项定律，于1819年出版。在上个世纪出版的几乎所有可用参考文献中，第五条定律已被系统地遗忘，导致人们普遍但不正确地相信阿拉戈菲涅耳只给出了四个干扰定律。第五定律描述了存在180的附加阶段${}^{\circ }$而不是由于路径或速度差异而引起的，在双折射晶体中经过一定偏振转换的线性偏振光束中。两年后，菲涅尔（Fresnel）为这个意外的阶段提供了完整的解释，表明他对什么可以明确指出是光学中的几何相位的第一个描述有了很好的理解。