the law stating that the intensity of a beam of plane-polarized light after passing through a rotatable polarizer varies as the square of the cosine of the angle through which the polarizer is rotated from the position that gives maximum intensity
Also called: law of Malus, Malus cosine-squared law (ˈkousainˌskwɛərd)
Word origin
[named after E. L. Malus (1775–1812), French physicist]