Polarizer is an idealized nonphysical model of a polarizing filter. When unpolarized light is incident on Polarizer, the transmitted light is polarized in the sense that it is tagged with a specified polarization state number. If polarized (tagged) light is incident on a Polarizer, and the polarization state of the light matches the state of the filter, then the light passes through unchanged; if the state number of the light is different than that of the filter, the light is blocked.
The unphysical parts of WaveTrain's Polarizer properties are that:
(a) Any number of polarization states are allowed, represented by the number 1, 2, 3, etc., with 0 representing "unpolarized" light.
(b) When unpolarized light is put through a Polarizer the intensity is not affected, it is simply tagged with a state number.
The unphysical properties of the WaveTrain Polarizer can actually be rather useful for wave-optics modeling: they provide a simple formal mechanism for separating and combining different beams in a system without inserting a larger number of components that have no effect on the wave properties of the beams.

Parameters
polarization	int	idealized (nonphysical) polarization state. in effect, each integer except zero specifies a different "polarization" state, and all are taken to be mutually "orthogonal". If set to zero, passes all light unchanged.	1
Inputs
incomingIncident	WaveTrain	describes all light incident from the "incoming" direction	WaveTrain()
outgoingIncident	WaveTrain	describes all light incident from the "outgoing" direction	WaveTrain()
Outputs
incomingTransmitted	WaveTrain	describes all light transmitted in the "incoming" direction
outgoingTransmitted	WaveTrain	describes all light transmitted in the "outgoing" direction
Subsystems
Last Saved: Thu Mar 15 21:03:44 MDT 2007 by TVE version 2007B