5. On Cauchy's and Green's Doctrine of Extraneous Force to explain dynamically Fresnel's Kinematics of Double Refraction

Abstract

Green's dynamics of polarisation by reflection, and Stokes's dynamics of the diffraction of polarised light, and Stokes's and Rayleigh's dynamics of the blue sky, all agree in, as seems to me, irrefragably demonstrating Fresnel's original conclusion, that in plane polarised light the line of vibration is perpendicular to the plane of polarisation; the “plane of polarisation” being defined as the plane through the ray and perpendicular to the reflecting surface, when light is polarised by reflection.