Question

A beam of circularly polarized light of intensity I0 travels in the +z direction and is incident from the left on a stack of three linear polarizers as shown in the diagram above. (Note: Circularly polarized light has x- and y-components of E0 that differ in phase by 90 degrees. Thus, E0 at any given z-value forms a vector that rotates uniformly in the xy plane. For the purposes of this problem, you can consider circularly polarized light as unpolarized light.) The transmission axes of the first two polarizers make angles with the x-axis of theta1 = 60degrees and theta2 = 130degrees, respectiv

Answer 1

What is theta3, the angle between the x-axis and the transmission axis of the third polarizer?

Answer 2

I have too much work to be able to show what I've done but some key equations in use would be,
I = Io cos^2(theta) law of malus
I = 1/2Io relation between circularly polarized rays and polarized light