Kenzo YAMANAKA, Shinji KIMURA, and Masato NOGUCHI

Optical Technology Center, HOYA Corporation, 2-36-9 Maeno-cho, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo 174-8639, Japan

(Received August 29, 2008; Revised May 8, 2009; Accepted May 14, 2009)

The measuring system of two-dimensional birefringence distribution with a polarization modulator and a rotating analyzer using a rotating analyzer method is presented. The system simply consists of a laser diode, two polarizers, two quarter wave plates and a CCD camera. Thanks to an imaging system, the mechanism to scan a sample is unnecessary and two-dimensional measurement is possible and easy. The birefringence of retardation and orientation of the optic axis can be determined by the azimuth angle of an elliptically polarized light passing through a sample. The azimuth angle is obtained by applying the phase shifting algorithm to measure the polarization properties; by improving the calculation algorithm, wide range measurement is accomplished. The measurement procedure and a number of results are described.

Key words: birefringence, measurement system, optic axis, retardation