Spectroscopic Stokes polarimeter with dual rotating retarder and analyzer for optical rotation measurement

Abstract

A measurement of optical rotation is proposed by the rotating angle of the polarized light after passing through the optically activity sample. However, the actual beam contains the retardation components caused by the stress of the optical activity and the optical axis error of quartz. We have proposed an optical rotation measurement method using Stokes polarimeter with a dual rotating retarder and analyzer. Two standard quartz plates of 0.8 mm and 1.6 mm thickness are measured as samples. The characteristics of optical rotation dispersion of the two standard quartz plates correspond with theoretical values at wavelengths from 550 nm to 900 nm. We succeeded to separate the optical rotation from the birefringence.