Measurements of the thermally induced phase-retardation changes in an optical polarization-sensitive instrument.

The thermally induced phase-retardation changes between two orthogonal polarizations of a propagating light while passing through some optical components have been investigated in an optical polarization-sensitive instrument. The measurements were performed in a dual-channel common-path polarization interferometer based on optical homodyne method. We study temperature dependent phase-retardation variations when the lights pass through a heated quarter-wave plate at different azimuth angles. By the way, we also successfully measure the path dependent phase-retardation changes when the lights pass through the different kinds of beam splitters under the same thermal impacts. These results show that the variations of ambient temperature will easily cause the systematical measurement errors in the optical polarization-sensitive instrument. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 53:771-773, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.25838 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]