Alexander T. Martin

Measurement of transmission and reflection from a thick anisotropic crystal modeled by a sum of incoherent partial waves.

Formulas for modeling ellipsometric measurements of bianisotropic crystals assume perfectly coherent plane wave illumination. As such, the finite coherence of typical spectroscopic ellipsometers renders such formulas invalid for crystals thicker than a few micrometers. Reflection measurements of thick crystalline slabs show depolarization. Researchers have proposed strategies for the full accounting for multiply reflected incoherent waves in anisotropic, arbitrarily oriented crystals [Appl. Opt.41, 2521 (2002).APOPAI0003-693510.1364/AO.41.002521], but to the best of our knowledge these methods have not been tested by explicit measurements. It is shown that by a summation of multiply reflected incoherent waves, transmission and reflection measurements of thick quartz slabs can be interpreted in terms of the constitutive material parameters.

Gyration and Permittivity of Ethylenediammonium Sulfate Crystals.

Ethylenediammonium sulfate (EDS) crystals were grown from aqueous solution and cleaved into thin (100-500 micron) plates. The 422 point group of EDS was confirmed by X-ray diffraction. The constitutive relations of EDS crystals were determined through generalized ellipsometry with an instrument that uses four photoelastic modulators (4PEM). The optical rotation at 500 nm, for example, was + 22.9°/mm along the optic axis and - 12.1°/mm perpendicular to the optic axis for the P41 21 2 crystals. Enantiomorphous twins frequently form across the (001) plane. Mirrored halves must be separated by cleavage in advance of optical measurements. Chirality 28:460-465, 2016.

Oriented attachment by enantioselective facet recognition in millimeter-sized gypsum crystals

Crystal growth by oriented attachment involves the spontaneous self-assembly of adjoining crystals with common crystallographic orientations. Herein, we report the oriented attachment of gypsum crystals on agitation to form stereoselective mesoscale aggregates.

Revisiting polarimetry near the isotropic point of an optically active, non-enantiomorphous, molecular crystal

Accurate polarimetric measurements of the optical activity of crystals along low symmetry directions are facilitated by isotropic points, frequencies where dispersion curves of eigenrays cross and the linear birefringence disappears. We report here the optical properties and structure of achiral, uniaxial (point group D2d ) potassium trihydrogen di-(cis-4-cyclohexene-1,2-dicarboxylate) dihydrate, whose isotropic point was previously detected (S. A. Kim, C. Grieswatch, H. Küppers, Zeit. Krist. 1993; 208:219-222) and exploited for a singular measurement of optical activity normal to the optic axis. The crystal structure associated with the aforementioned study was never published. We report it here, confirming the space group assignment I 4¯c2, along with the frequency dependence of the fundamental optical properties and the constitutive tensors by fitting optical dispersion relations to measured Mueller matrix spectra. k-Space maps of circular birefringence and of the Mueller matrix near the isotropic wavelength are measured and simulated. The signs of optical rotation are correlated with the absolute crystallographic directions.