Home – Home – Jornals – Avtometriya 2010 number 2

Splitting of orthogonally polarized radiation components at the exit of birefringent crystal prisms (BCPs) having a special structure and fabricated from uniaxial Iceland spar crystals is studied by the vector analysis method. For these prisms, the angle of splitting between the ordinary (o) and extraordinary (e) beams at the BCP exit depends linearly on the angle of incidence of a collimated laser beam onto the BCP entrance face. This dependence has the maximum slope only for two fixed orientations of the optical axis vectors a₁ and a₂ in both crystal wedges (BCP components). As a result of interference of polarized o- and e-waves, a straight-line interference pattern with a controlled and smoothly changed spatial frequency in the range from 0 to 125 periods/mm can be formed directly at the BCP exit. The BCP ability to form a sinusoidal interference pattern with the modulation depth not lower than 30% and with a varied spatial frequency at the aperture up to 30 mm makes it possible to use the BCP as a basis for creating a compact static Fourier spectrometer with the ultimate theoretical resolution λ/Δλ up to ~2000.