Measurement of birefringence using polarization phase-shifting Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

An interferometric method for quantitative evaluation of the magnitude and direction of birefringence of an arbitrarily oriented birefringent sample is developed and presented. The analysis shows that full-field analysis of a spatially varying birefringence is possible by suitably combining several interferogram frames obtained by varying the polarization parameters involved. The preliminary experimental result for a uniformly birefringent sample with a known direction of birefringence is presented.