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Optimal achromatic wave retarders using two birefringent wave plates

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2013-03-20
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The Optical Society Of America
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Two plates of different birefringence material can be combined to obtain an achromatic wave retarder. In this work, we achieve a correction for the overall retardation of the system that extends the relation to any azimuth. Current techniques for the design of achromatic wave retarders do not present a parameter that characterizes its achromatism on a range of wavelengths. Thus, an achromatic degree has been introduced, in order to determine the optimal achromatic design composed with retarder plates for a spectrum of incident light. In particular, we have optimized a quarter retarder using two wave plates for the visible spectrum. Our technique has been compared to previous results, showing significant improvement.
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© 2013 Optical Society of America. This work was supported by the project “Photonic Transceiver for Secure Communications Space” of the European Space Agency with Tecnológica Ingeniería, Calidad y Ensayos, and by project DPI2011-27851 of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion of Spain.
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