The course will include 13 lectures, organized through Zoom:

1. Polarization of light: definition, brief history, role in photonics, demonstrations.

2. Jones vector and Jones matrices. Transformations with phase plates and rotators.

3. Stokes observables and Müller matrices. Poincare sphere representation.

4. Geometrical phase. Pancharatnam phase.

5. Crystal optics: birefringence, ellipsoid of wave normals

6. Crystal optics: uniaxial and biaxial crystals, walkoff, liquid crystals.

7. Polarization of light under tight focusing.

8. Polarization optical elements that we use in the lab.

9. Polarization in nonlinear optics: phase and group matching.

10. Polarization in quantum optics: operators.

11. Polarization in quantum optics: states. ‘Hidden polarization’ effect.

12. Polarization entangled photons: Bell inequality violation.

13. Quantum key distribution with polarized photons.