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`

Citing this page. This page is part of the documentation of MTEX, a free and open source MATLAB toolbox for analyzing and modeling crystallographic textures. It was written by The MTEX Developers and is published at https://mtex-toolbox.github.io/refractiveIndexTensor.birefringence.html. If you use MTEX, or reuse text or figures from this page, in your research, please cite

F. Bachmann, R. Hielscher, H. Schaeben: Texture Analysis with MTEX - Free and Open Source Software Toolbox, Solid State Phenomena 160 (2010), 63-68. 10.4028/www.scientific.net/SSP.160.63

BibTeX

@article{bachmann2010mtex,
  author  = {F. Bachmann and R. Hielscher and H. Schaeben},
  title   = {Texture Analysis with MTEX - Free and Open Source Software Toolbox},
  journal = {Solid State Phenomena},
  volume  = {160},
  pages   = {63-68},
  year    = {2010},
  doi     = {10.4028/www.scientific.net/SSP.160.63},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/SSP.160.63}
}

Other papers describing specific MTEX methods are listed under Publications — please cite the one that best fits your application. The MTEX source code is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0; the text and figures of this documentation are licensed under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse — including by automated systems — provided The MTEX Developers and this page are credited.