Phase change measurement of birefringent optical devices with white light interferometry

This paper describes a method to determine the phase retardation of birefringent optical components by combining spectral interferometry and the Fourier transform method. The retardation of each orthogonal polarization component was resolved by using two rotatable linear polarizers in the interferometer. The phase retardation measured by using suggested method was compared to that measured using the conventional polarimetric method. The results of independent methods were well matched, which confirms the validity of the proposed method.