a Raman Research Institute, Bangalore 560 080, India
b Department of Physics, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
Abstract:
A detailed analysis of the polarization eigenmodes of a QHQ retarder (a half-wave plate sandwiched between two identical quarter-wave plates) is presented. These are shown to be discontinuous as a function of the orientation of the half-wave plate, as a function of the wavelength of incident light and as a function of the retardation of the middle waveplate.