Compact Methods for Measuring Stress Birefringence

摘要

The recent development of channeled spectropolarimetry presents opportunities for spectropolarimetric measurements of dynamic phenomena in a very compact instrument. We present measurements of stress-induced birefringence in a simple plastic by both a reference rotating-compensator spectropolarimeter and a channeled spectropolarimeter. The agreement between the two instruments shows the promise of the channeled technique and provides a proof-of-principle that the method can be used for a very simple conversion of imaging spectrometers into imaging spectropolarimeters.