Questions addressed: Phenomena of double reflection Birefringent material Change in polarization by birefringent material

Phenomena of double refraction

In previous lectures, so far we studied the cases where the propagation of light through a dielectric medium is independent of its state of polarization and direction of propagation. That means that a randomly polarized light or two mutually orthogonal polarized lights will see the same refractive index in all the direction while propagating through the medium. Recalling the Huygen's principle, one can say that if there is a point source of light inside the medium, it will emit a spherical wave front, as shown in Fig.1, irrespective of the state of polarization. Such materials are called as isotropic medium.