Goldstein Dennis H
Air Force Research Laboratory, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida 32542, USA.
Appl Opt. 2006 Oct 20;45(30):7944-50. doi: 10.1364/ao.45.007944.
Beetles of the scarab family are known to reflect circularly polarized light from incident unpolarized light. They are unusual in that there are many animals that use polarized light in some form and several that actually create it, but there are few examples of the creation of circularly polarized light by animals. Scarabs have been measured with a spectropolarimetric reflectometer and are found to reflect light that is generally left-hand circularly polarized. Previous work is summarized, and what is believed to be new measurements of several scarab specimens are presented.
金龟子科的甲虫能够将入射的非偏振光反射为圆偏振光。它们的独特之处在于，虽然有许多动物以某种形式利用偏振光，还有几种动物实际上能够产生偏振光，但动物产生圆偏振光的例子却很少。已使用分光偏振反射计对金龟子进行了测量，发现它们反射的光通常是左旋圆偏振光。本文总结了先前的研究工作，并给出了对几种金龟子标本的新测量结果。
