POLARIZATION ERRORS ASSOCIATED WITH BIREFRINGENT WAVEPLATES

Although zero-order quartz waveplates are widely used in instrumentati on that needs good temperature and field-of-view characteristics, the residual errors associated with these devices can be very important in high-resolution polarimetry measurements. How the field-of-View chara cteristics are affected by retardation errors and the misalignment of optic axes in a double-crystal waveplate is discussed, The retardation measurements made on zero-order quartz and single-order ''achromatic' ' waveplates and how the misalignment errors affect those measurements are discussed.