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(optics

) Rotation of the plane of polarization of plane-polarized light, or of the major axis of the polarization ellipse of elliptically polarized light by transmission through a substance or medium.|Medical Dictionary:optical rotationThe change or rotation in the plane of polarization that occurs when polarized light is passedthrough an optically active substance.

Optical rotation

is the rotation of linearly polarized lightas it travels through certain materials. It occurs in solutions of chiralmolecules such assucrose(sugar), solids with rotatedcrystal planes such asquartz, andspin-polarizedgases of atoms or molecules. It is used in thesugar industry to measure syrup concentration, inopticsto manipulate polarization, inchemistry to characterize substances in solution, inoptical mineralogyto help identify certain minerals in thinsections, and is being developed as a method to measure blood sugar concentration in diabetic people.

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History

The two asymmetric crystals forms, dextro and levorotatory, of tartaric acid.The rotation of the orientation of linearly polarized light was first observed in 1811 in quartzby French physicistFrançois Jean Dominique Arago. Around this same time,Jean Baptiste Biotalso observed the effect in liquids and gases of organic substances such as turpentine. In 1822, the English astronomer Sir Joun F.W. Herschel discovered that different crystal forms of quartzrotated the linear polarization in different directions. Simple polarimetershave been used since this time to measure the concentrations of simple sugars, such asglucose, in solution. In fact, onename for glucose, dextrose, refers to the fact that it causes linearly polarized light to rotate to theright or dexter side. Similarly, levulose, more commonly known as fructose,causes the plane of polarization to rotate to the left. Fructose is even more strongly levorotatory than glucose isdextrorotatory.Invert sugar syrup, commercially formed by the hydrolysis of sucrosesyrup to a 1

mixture of the component simple sugars, fructose and glucose, gets its name from the fact thatthe conversion causes the direction of rotation to "invert" from right to left.In 1849,Louis Pasteur resolved a problem concerning the nature of tartaric acid. A solution of this compound derived from living things (specifically,wine lees) rotated the plane of polarizationof light passing through it, but tartaric acid derived bychemical synthesishad no such effect, even though its reactions were identical and its elemental composition was the same.Pasteur noticed that the crystals came in two asymmetric forms that were mirror images of oneanother. Sorting the crystals by hand gave two forms of the compound: solutions of one formrotated polarized light clockwise, while the other form rotated light counterclockwise. An equalmix of the two had no polarizing effect on light. Pasteur deduced the molecule in question wasasymmetric and could exist in two different forms that resemble one another as would left- andright-hand gloves, and that the organic form of the compound consisted purely of the one type.In 1874,Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff andJoseph Achille Le Belindependently proposed that the phenomenon of optical activity could be explained by assuming that the chemical bonds betweencarbon atoms and their neighbors were directed towards the corners of a regular tetrahedron. Thisled to a better understanding of the three-dimensional nature of molecules.

Theory

Optical activity is a type of birefringence.Any linear polarization of light can be written as an equal combination of right-hand (RHC) and left-hand circularly (LHC) polarized light:where is theelectric fieldof the light. The relative phase between the twocircular polarizations, 2θ

, sets the direction of the linear polarization to θ

. In an optically active materialthe two circular polarizations experience different refractive indices. The difference in the indices quantifies the strength of the optical activity,.This difference is a characteristic of the material (for substances in solution it is given as thespecific rotation

). After traveling through length

of material the two polarizations pick up arelative phase of ,where λ is the wavelength of the light (in vacuum). Consequently, the final polarization is rotatedto angle θ

+ Δθ.Generally, the refractive index depends on the wavelength (see dispersion). The variation in rotation with the wavelength of the light is calledoptical rotatory dispersion(ORD). ORDspectra andcircular dichroismspectra are related through theKramers–Kronig relations. Complete knowledge of one spectrum allows the calculation of the other.2