Polarization beam splitting in a Glan-Taylor prism based on dual effects of both birefringence and Goos-Hanchen shift

Abstract

With the structure of biprism, polarization beam splitting in a Glan-Taylor polarizer was explored based on the birefringence and Goos-Hanchen shift. Due to the birefringence of the light in calcite crystal, the extraordinary light worked as the position calibration. As for the ordinary light, the propagated direction tilted noticeably due to the refraction as well as Goos-Hanchen effect at the prism-air interface of in the air gap. The Snell's law and stationary-phase approach were utilized for the calculation of the beam splitting between the two orthogonal polarization elements. By choosing appropriate incident angle and initial polarization, remarkable beam splitting was realized. With this configuration, the resolution with a magnitude of 10−5° and 10−3° was achieved for the response of the incident angle and polarization detection respectively.

Keywords

• Ultrasensitive angle detection
• Polarization beam splitting
• Goos-Hanchen effect
• Birefringence