title: Full-field birefringence imaging by thermal-light polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography. II. Instrument and results.
abstract: We describe an instrument for measuring the magnitude of birefringence of tomographic images and the principal directions of axes that use thermal-light polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography. The instrument permits full-field measurements with an axial resolution of 1.5 microm and a transverse resolution limited by diffraction. We obtained a sensitivity of 84 dB, limited by shot noise, when we integrated the signal for 1 s. We verified the validity of the measurement by measuring the birefringence of a variable phase shifter. We present typical results obtained with optical samples.
authors.affiliation: Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris, Laboratoire d'Optique Physique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Unité Propre de Recherche 5, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Julien
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Moreau
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Loriette
authors.forename: Albert-Claude
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Boccara