October 2009
Intermediate to advanced
503 pages
14h 28m
English
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14.19 Quater-wave plate
A quater-wave 
plate is a thin double refracting crystal of calcite or quartz, cut and polished parallel to its optic axis to a thickness ‘d’ such that it produces a path difference of 
or phase difference of 
between the o-ray and e-ray when plane polarized light incident normally on the surface and passes through the plate.
As shown in Fig. 14.31, consider a calcite crystal of thickness ‘d’. The optic axis is parallel to the ...