Tracking the rotation of a birefringent crystal from speckle correlation

Abstract

The random intensity distribution observed due to the propagation of a coherent beam of light through a scattering medium is known as a speckle pattern. The interaction of the speckles with a birefringent crystal, here, YVO4 results in the e-ray and o-ray speckles. It is observed that the eray and o-ray speckles experience an angular shift with the rotation of the crystal and the shift depends on the rotation angle of the crystal. It is also found that the rate of the shift is different for e-ray and o-ray speckles, and is independent of the topological charge of the beam incident on the scattering medium. The observed rate of shift of the speckle pattern is found to be same as that of the e-ray and o-ray beams. It is experimentally demonstrated that the rotation of a birefringent crystal can be tracked very accurately from the speckle shift measurement.