title: Polarization singularity democracy: WYSIWYG.
abstract: The canonical point singularity of elliptically polarized light is a C point, an isolated point of circular polarization surrounded by a field of polarization ellipses. The defining singular property of a C point is that the surrounding ellipses rotate about the point. It is shown that this rotation is seen only for a particular line of sight (LOS) and, conversely, that there exists a unique LOS for every ellipse along which the ellipse is seen as a singularity. It is also shown that changes in LOS can turn singularities into stationary points and vice versa. The democratic behavior of polarization singularities and stationary points is a consequence of the fundamental "what you see is what you get" property of ellipse fields. Simple experiments are proposed for observing this unusual property of elliptically polarized light.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel. freund@mail.biu.ac.il
authors.forename: Isaac
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Freund