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Why can't you use sunlight as the source of changing magnetic flux for Faraday's law? Is sunlight not partially made of an undulating magnetic field?

Edit: Use plane polarized sunlight that is made coherent?

user2577361
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The changing magnetic flux from sunlight is incoherent. For every bit of flux in one direction there is probably another bit of flux in a different direction nearby. They roughly cancel out.

Dale
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  • What about plane-polarized sunlight, that is filtered in some way that coordinates the flux? Is this possible? – user2577361 Oct 05 '22 at 01:44
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    Polarization won't change that. It will just make it so that everything is either one direction or the opposite with nothing in-between. You will still have as much light on average going "left" vs "right" or "up" vs "down" depending on the orientation of the polarizer – Dale Oct 05 '22 at 01:52
  • Thanks Dale, can you make the sunlight coherent somehow to fix this? (Maybe a standing wave.) I assume the answer is "no." – user2577361 Oct 05 '22 at 02:01
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    Well, you can use a solar panel to power a laser. Does that count? – Dale Oct 05 '22 at 02:03
  • Haha I guess so! I was hoping that maybe it would be possible to trap plane-polarized sunlight in an optical cavity or something. – user2577361 Oct 05 '22 at 02:11