Development of Ellipsometry Based on Spin Hall Effect of Light (6^th report)

Accuracy affecting parameters

Abstract

On the event of Spin Hall Effect of Light (SHEL), a transverse splitting of light emerges at an optical interface depending on the polarization of the incident light. After the demonstration of weak measurements to observe the SHEL phenomenon, it has been receiving interest and researched for application in many fields, including for precision measurement. By using a pair of polarizers, the state of incident and reflected light can be defined as the weak measurements realization and further used for the SHEL observations. When a linearly polarized beam impinged on the sample, the surface condition of sample will affect the reflected SHEL beam. Observing the change of the transverse shift distance from the recorded reflected beam makes it possible to retrieve the surface condition by SHEL ellipsometry. In SHEL observation using weak measurements, several factors can affect the SHEL ellipsometry measurement such as the beam propagation factor, incident angle, and azimuth angle. In this report, a closer look at the affecting parameters is discussed and confirmed by experiment. While the beam propagation factors generally affect the amplification value, the incident and azimuth angle chosen as experiment parameters can affect the measurement accuracy.