The polarization of an electromagnetic wave describes the path traced by its transverse electric-field vector at a fixed point. A monochromatic wave may be linearly, circularly, or elliptically polarized; in vacuum it has two independent transverse polarization states.
An electromagnetic wave has circular polarization when its transverse electric field has constant magnitude and rotates once during each period. In complex-amplitude notation, two orthogonal components have equal magnitude and a relative phase of one quarter-cycle.
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