polarization

• polarisation

Borrowed from French polarisation. By surface analysis, polarize +‎ -ation or polar +‎ -ization.

• IPA^(key): /ˌpoʊlərɪˈzeɪʃən/

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

polarization (countable and uncountable, plural polarizations)

1. The production or the condition of polarity.
   • 2016, A. Alexandradinata, Zhijun Wang, B. Andrei Bernevig, “Topological Insulators from Group Cohomology”, in arXiv‎^[1]:

     The subtopologies that we discovered include: a glide-symmetric analog of the quantum spin Hall effect, an hourglass-flow topology (exemplified by our recently-proposed KHgSb material class), and quantized non-Abelian polarizations.

   1. (sociology) The grouping of opinions into two extremes.
      • 2004 June 2, William Safire, “Abolish the Penny”, in The New York Times‎^[2]:

        What frazzled pollsters, surly op-ed pages, snarling cable talkfests and issue-starved candidates for office need is a fresh source of hot-eyed national polarization.

      • 2019 October 1, Thomas Carothers, Andrew O’Donohue, “How to Understand the Global Spread of Political Polarization”, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace‎^[3], archived from the original on 14 February 2023:

        Polarization is tearing at the seams of democracies around the world, from Brazil and India to Poland and Turkey.

   2. (physics) The production of polarized light; the direction in which the electric field of an electromagnetic wave points.
      • 2013 July 16, skullsinthestars, “Simple fun with polarizers!”, in Skulls in the Stars‎^[4]:

        We don’t usually notice polarization because direct sunlight and light from ordinary incandescent and fluorescent bulbs is unpolarized: it contains equal mixtures of horizontally and vertically polarized light.

   4. (chemistry, physics) The separation of positive and negative charges in a nucleus, atom, molecule or system.