Abstract
I MUST now endeavour to give some slight account of the theories that have been put forward in explanation of magneto-optic rotation. There is an essential distinction between it and what is sometimes called the natural rotation, the plane of polarised light produced by substances, such as solutions of sugar, tartaric acid, quartz, &c, some of which rotate the plane to the right, some to the left. When light is sent once along a column of any of those substances without any magnetic field, its plane of rotation is rotated just as it is in heavy glass or bisulphide of carbon in a magnetic field. But if the ray, after passing through the column of sugar or quartz, is received on a silvered reflector and sent back again through the column to the starting point, its plane of polarisation is found to be in the same direction as at first. Quite the contrary happens when the rotation is due to the action of a magnetic field. Then the rotation is found to be doubled by the forward and backward passage, and it can be increased to any required degree by sending the ray backward and forward through the substance, as shown in this other diagram (Fig. 8).
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Magneto-Optic Rotation and its Explanation by a Gyrostatic System.1 II. Nature 60, 404–407 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/060404a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/060404a0