Optical birefringence in uniaxially compressed aerogels

The uniaxial strain dependence of refractive index anisotropy has been measured for a series of high-porosity aerogel samples. Uniaxial compression of compliant aerogels introduces an optical activity into the material. We report on the compression-dependent optical birefringence of samples with porosities from 95 to 99% under a uniaxial compression of up to 15% in the spectral range 320-800 nm.