Crystal Optical Properties of Inhomogeneous Plates and the Problems of Polarization Tomography of Photoelastic Materials

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the optical properties of inhomogeneous birefringent plates using Jones matrix formalism, highlighting how apparent optical gyration arises from plate orientations and relating polarimetric parameters to dielectric tensor components.

Contribution

It introduces a model for inhomogeneous materials composed of weakly birefringent plates and clarifies the relationship between polarimetric parameters and dielectric tensors in polarization tomography.

Findings

Inhomogeneous plates exhibit apparent optical gyration due to orientation differences.

Relations between polarimetric parameters and dielectric tensor components are established.

The analysis is applicable to weak optical anisotropy in photoelastic media.

Abstract

Using the Jones matrix formalism, crystal optical properties of inhomogeneous material consisting of a pile of weakly birefringent plates are analysed in relation to the cell model adopted in polarization tomography of 3D dielectric tensor field in photoelastic media. It is shown that the material manifests in general an "apparent" optical gyration caused by different orientations of the plates. Relations between the polarimetric parameters and the dielectric tensor components are ascertained for the case of weak optical anisotropy.