Response of the integrated polariscope

Abstract

A new photoelastic technique has been developed for simultaneous recording of the amount of birefringence in transmitted and in scattered light. This paper presents the basic theories of transmission and scattered-light polariscopes and hence deduces the theoretical foundation of the method and technique of the developed integrated polariscope. A laser is used as light source, or two identical lasers are used. In a one-laser system the linearly polarized ray is split into two beams, one of which is expanded and passes through the standard transmission polariscope, and the other, being about 1 mm in diameter, enters the photoelastic object parallel to its middle plane. An ‘integrating prism’ has been developed for simultaneous recording of the standard isochromatics and of three scattered light beams; a beam scattered parallel to the polariscope axis and two complementary beams scattered at angels of − π/4 and + π/4.