Description of the Birefringence Effect in Optical Media With Several Types of Anisotropy

The paper proposes a method for finding the characteristics of the birefringence in optical media that possess several types of anisotropy simultaneously. It is proposed to characterize birefringence by a vector equal to the Stokes vector of the eigenpolarization multiplied by the phase shift between waves with eigenpolarizations. It is shown that such a vector of the complex birefringence is equal to the sum of such vectors corresponding to the component birefringences. The proposed method is well compatible with approaches to finding the polarization dynamics of propagating radiation based on the concepts of the Jones matrix and the Poincare sphere.

Automated summary

The paper presents a method for identifying the characteristics of birefringence in optical media with multiple types of anisotropy simultaneously, using a vector to characterize birefringence. The method proposed is well compatible with approaches to finding the polarization dynamics of propagating radiation.