Optical transmission in polycrystals

Abstract

Optical transmission in a polycrystalline aggregate consisting of randomly oriented anisotropic transparent crystals has been worked using Mueller matrices. The interesting results are: (1) a completely polarized beam of light emerges as partially polarized light. (2) The completely polarized part of the emergent beam is in the same state of polarization as the incident light for optically inactive crystallites. (3) The intensity of the completely polarized part not only depends on the optical and the geometrical parameters of the crystallite but also on the polarization state of the incident light. (4) For optically active crystallites the medium behaves as an isotropic optically active solid with a rotatory power equal to the mean rotatory power of the single crystal. This helps one in extracting most of the gyration tensor components in enantiomorphic optically active crystals.