The first author, Russell Chipman, has been teaching polarization for over 30 years while simultaneously conducting a wide-ranging research program into polarization in optical design, polarimetry, and polarizing devices. Over the years, research took priority over book writing, but course materials were steadily developed and taught.

Starting in 2006, Garam Young wrote a dissertation on polarization ray tracing, during the course of which many underlying issues in polarization ray tracing surrounding phase, retardance, and skew aberration were uncovered and deep issues were clarified. These advances led to support from the Science Foundation Arizona to write a research polarization ray tracing program, Polaris-M, to demonstrate these new polarization ray tracing methods. Tiffany Lam, together with Steve McClain, took the responsibility for the anisotropic materials ray tracing algorithm development and testing, generating many highly instructive polarization ray tracing examples and developing special treatment for birefringent ray trace.

Polarized Light and Optical Systems is the culmination of the first author’s research into polarization aberrations that began in 1982 in graduate school in optics at the University of Arizona under the direction of Jim Wyant and Jim Breckinridge of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Between Chipman’s teaching materials and research experience, Young’s polarization ray tracing dissertation, and Lam’s anisotropic ray trace dissertation, the pieces fell into place for this ambitious project. This is not just a book about polarized light and the polarization calculus, but one that will lead you toward a modern view of optical systems, where everything is a polarization element.