Simulation of Conical Refraction as a Tool for Polarization Metrology

Conical refraction is a well-know phenomenon occurring in biaxial crystals, whereby an input Gaussian beam is transformed into a light ring whose intensity distribution is related to the incoming polarization. Several applications have been developed based on this phenomenon, polarization metrology among them. In this use case, we demonstrate the design of a polarimeter with two biaxial crystals, one in each arm of the setup, utilizing the fast physical-optics software VirtualLab Fusion.