Polarization or polarisation can refer to:

In the physical sciences

• Polarization (waves), the orientation of oscillations in the plane perpendicular to a transverse wave's direction of travel
• Dielectric polarization, charge separation in insulating materials:
  • Polarization density, volume dielectric polarization
  • Dipolar polarization, orientation of permanent dipoles
  • Ionic polarization, displacement of ions in a crystal
  • Maxwell-Wagner-Sillars polarization, slow long-distance charge separation in dielectric spectroscopy on inhomogeneous soft matter
  • Polarization (corrosion), a change in the equilibrium potential of an electrochemical reaction
• Spin polarization, the degree by which the spin of elementary particles is aligned to a given direction
• Polarizability, an important fundamental property of subatomic particles
• Photon polarization, the mathematical link between wave polarization and spin polarization
• Vacuum polarization, a process in which a background electromagnetic field produces virtual electron-positron pairs
• Polarity in embryogenesis, during development, an embryo has an animal pole and a vegetal pole

In mathematics

• Polarization of an Abelian variety, in the mathematics of complex manifolds
• Polarization of an algebraic form, a technique for expressing a homogeneous polynomial in a simpler fashion by adjoining more variables
• Polarization identity expresses an inner product in terms of its associated norm

In the social sciences

• Polarization (politics), the process by which the public opinion divides and goes to the extremes
• Polarization (psychology), the process whereby a social or political group is divided into opposing sub-groups
• Social polarization
  • Group polarization
  • Attitude polarization
  • Racial polarization, the process whereby a population with varyingly diverse ancestry is divided into distinct, homogenous racial groups

See also

• Polarity (disambiguation)
• Polarizer, a device which polarizes light
• Depolarization and hyperpolarization of neuronal membrane potentials (in neuroscience).
• Category:Polarization, for articles about polarization of light and other electromagnetic waves
• Polarization in astronomy
• Induced polarization, a geophysical imaging technique used to identify subsurface materials

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