If you increase the separation between the mirror and sugar (to a few million miles), it becomes reasonable to remove the container of sugar whilst the light is en route to the mirror.
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2015 at 6:04 PM From: "Warren D Smith" <warren.wds@gmail.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: [math-fun] Salamin polarization puzzle
ES is correct that mirror+sugar does not solve his problem (sorry). More generally mirror plus anything will not solve the problem because Maxwell eqns are time-reversible and the mirror converts a beam into its time reverse. Hence, any incoming beam that gets frobulated on the way to the mirror, will get unfrobulated on the way back.
So how about, (1) sugar, (2) mirror, (3) now beam is both helicity reversed and 90degree plane of polarization rotated, (4) beam now re-enters sugar, which ruins it. But, regarding (3) as the "output" it seems like succeeded in some sense.
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