The Measurement of Birefringence and Dichroism of Substrate Samples

Abstract

Current research in digital data storage is centered on developing a disk which can store data optically. However, in the process of reading back a signal from an optic disk, a degradation of the signal has been noticed. The effects of birefringence and dichroism are thought to be the cause of this degradation. Birefringence and dichroism are properties of the substrates used to make optic disks. In order to characterize these properties, I developed a system which employs a laser, two polarizers, a Babinet-Soleil compensator .and an intensity detector to measure their effects. Through the use of this system and Jones matrix theory, the effect of birefringence was measured and the effect of dichroism was better understood.