Measurements of the principal axis and phase retardation using a new circular polariscope and the Senarmont setup with electro-optic modulation is presented. In the first step of measurements, we use the electro-optic modulated circular heterodyne interferometer and the phase-lock technique to precisely measure the principal axis angle. After removing the first quarter-wave plate in the first setup, a Senarmont setup is designed to determine the phase retardation also using the phase-lock technique. The simple phase extraction algorithm for the principal axis angle and the phase retardation measurement is presented. The average absolute errors of the principal axis angle and the phase retardation of the λ/8-wave plate are determined to be only 0.468⁰ and 0.23%.

Date Published: 12 April 2005
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 5852, Third International Conference on Experimental Mechanics and Third Conference of the Asian Committee on Experimental Mechanics, (12 April 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.621517

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5852:
Third International Conference on Experimental Mechanics and Third Conference of the Asian Committee on Experimental Mechanics
Chenggen Quan; Fook Siong Chau; Anand Asundi; Brian Stephen Wong; Chwee Teck Lim, Editor(s)