Exact Theory of Retardation Plates*

Mechanism of photoinduced anisotropy in chalcogenide glasses

“…The result was used to calculate the birefringence, after taking multiple-interference effects into account. 24 The birefringence was induced with monochromatic light emitted from He-Ne lasers, ultrahighpressure Hg lamps, and a Xe lamp, in conjunction with some optical filters. The light intensity ranged over 10 Ϫ3 -10 3 W/cm 2 .…”

Electro-optic lightning detector

“…Note that when there is no quarter wave plate and the optics are aligned (19) reduces to (9) and a simple sine squared dependence results (solid line, Figure 4(a)). When the optics are misaligned, the net transmission increases slightly, but more importantly, the sensitivity T'(V) increases substantially at and near V = 0 (dashed line, Figure 4(a)).…”

“…The theory of transmission through birefringent media is well developed and the transmission through a crystal at an oblique angle can be derived by exact or approximate means ( [19], [20], [28], [29]). When a collimated beam of light enters a birefringent medium at an oblique angle, the transmitted field consists of two beams that propagate in two distinct directions.…”

“…In order to provide for a most general misalignment of the crystal, we allow for a rotation of the crystal about Z by an angle r. Results may be obtained by rotating the orientations of the polarizers and quarter wave plate by -v. Transmissions in this case are given by (19) and (20) with 6 replaced with 6 + r.…”

“…Using the expressions in (19) and (20), we have computed the theoretical transmission of an aligned and misaligned optical system with or without a quarter wave plate. The results are provided in Figure 4.…”