Malus' law
[ muh-loos-law; French ma-lys ]
nounOptics.
the law stating that the intensity of a beam of plane-polarized light after passing through a rotatable polarizer varies as the square of the cosine of the angle through which the polarizer is rotated from the position that gives maximum intensity.
Origin of Malus' law
1Named after E. L. Malus (1775–1812), French physicist
- Also called law of Ma·lus, Ma·lus co·sine-squared law [muh-loos-koh-sahyn skwaird-law]. /məˈlus ˈkoʊ saɪn ˈskwɛərd ˌlɔ/.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
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