Malus' law

[ muh-loos law; French ma-lys ]

noun

, Optics.

1. 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.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Malus' law¹

Named after E. L. Malus (1775–1812), French physicist