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Journal Article

Weak value amplified optical activity measurements

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Fischer,  Peer       
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Pfeifer, M., & Fischer, P. (2011). Weak value amplified optical activity measurements. Optics Express, 19(17), 16508-16517. doi:10.1364/OE.19.016508.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000B-0048-4
Abstract
We present a new form of optical activity measurement based on a modified weak value amplification scheme. It has recently been shown experimentally that the left- and right-circular polarization components refract with slightly different angles of refraction at a chiral interface causing a linearly polarized light beam to split into two. By introducing a polarization modulation that does not give rise to a change in the optical rotation it is possible to differentiate between the two circular polarization components even after post-selection with a linear polarizer. We show that such a modified weak value amplification measurement permits the sign of the splitting and thus the handedness of the optically active medium to be determined. Angular beam separations of Δθ ∼ 1 nanoradian, which corresponds to a circular birefringence of Δn ∼ 1 × 10−9, could be measured with a relative error of less than 1%.