Demonstration of an optical polarization magnifier with low birefringence

Abstract

In any polarimetric measurement technique, enhancing the laser polarization change of a laser beam before it reaches the analyzer can help in improving the sensitivity. This can be performed using an optical component having a large linear dichroism, the enhancement factor being equal to the square root of the ratio of the two transmission factors. A pile of parallel plates at Brewster incidence looks appropriate for realizing such a polarization magnifier. In this paper, we address the problem raised by the interference in the plates and between the plates, which affects the measurement by giving rise to birefringence. We demonstrate that wedged plates provide a convenient and efficient way to avoid this interference. We have implemented and characterized devices with 4 and 6 wedged plates at Brewster incidence which have led to a decisive improvement of the signal to noise ratio in our ongoing Parity Violation measurement.

08 october 2004

References in corpus (2)

• Resonant nonlinear magneto-optical effects in atoms
• A new Manifestation of Atomic Parity Violation in Cesium: a Chiral Optical Gain induced by linearly polarized 6S-7S Excitation

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Measurement of the parity violating 6S-7S transition amplitude in cesium achieved within 2 \times 10^{-13} atomic-unit accuracy by stimulated-emission detection
• Resources of polarimetric sensitivity in spin noise spectroscopy
• Pump-probe measurement of atomic parity violation in caesium with a precision of 2.6%