birefringence edit page

birefringence from refractive index tensor

Description

Birefringence is the difference in light speed in anisotropic material. When entering an anisotrpic media plane polarised light migrating along the propagation direction vprop is split into two orthogonally vibrating waves that moves at different speed, the slowest with nmax and the faster wave with nmax. The values of nmin and nmax can be calculated from the refractive index tensor containg the three pricipal refractive index of the mineral, nalpha, nbeta and ngamma and the ligth propagation direction (vprop) with repect to the crystal reference frame. The birefringence varies as function of the vprop and for each vprop coressponds to nmax-nmin.

Syntax

[n,nMin,nMax] = birefringence(rI,vprop)

Input

rI refractiveIndexTensor
vprop propagation direction vector3d

Output

nMin lowest refractive index for a given propagation direction
nMax highest refractive index for a given propagation direction
n difference between nMax and nMin
pMin vector3d polarization direction with the lowest refractive index
pMax vector3d polarization direction with the highest refractive index