Regular paper

[OPTICAL REVIEW Vol. 16, No. 2 (2009) 199-203]
© 2009 The Optical Society of Japan

Design of a Wedge Plate for Polarization-Preserving Angular Shifter

Yi-Kai CHENG^* and Jyh-Long CHERN

Department of Photonics, Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, Microelectronics and Information System Research Center, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan

(Received July 16, 2008; Accepted December 4, 2008; Revised November 26, 2008)

It is shown that by using a wedge plate, the incident direction of light propagation can be rotated as necessary while still preserving beam polarization. The basic conditions of these preservations of polarization are deduced. For numerical demonstration, it is shown that a collimated beam with +45^° linear polarization can be guided to any pre-settled direction where the square of ellipse ratio variation in the polarization is less than 0.0001%, while the variation of squared ellipse ratio of a right circular polarization beam is kept under 0.1%.

Key words: wedge plate, polarization, optical designs

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