Studies of photoelastic tomography process for 3D birefringence determination in phase microobjects

Abstract

In the paper we present the method for 3D measurement of birefringence in photonics components by means of automated photoelasticity combined with tomography. The enhanced measurement procedure is described and the experimental results obtained for an exotic phase object, namely glass capillary infilled with liquid crystals are presented. The sources of errors are discussed for the cases of different object models and the numerical experiments aiming in determination of limitations of the experimental procedures are performed. Finally the possibility of reduction of these errors by an introduction of additional numerical focusing priori the tomographic reconstruction algorithmis shown and its applicability is proven by numerical simulations.