AN ITERATIVE APPROACH TO CURVED RAY RECONSTRUCTION OF BIREFRINGENT FIELDS

The transmission of polarized light through non-homogeneous birefringe nt fields is examined, and an iterative approach for incorporating ray curvature into the analysis of tomographic data is proposed. The meth od extends strain-gradient theory and applies iterative algorithms whi ch have been used by other researchers to reconstruct fields which are non-homogeneous but optically isotropic. Optical anisotropy is incorp orated by using a light propagation model which includes both bending and separation of initially coincident light ray pairs. To illustrate the method, data are generated computationally and are analysed to det ermine the bending moment in a prismatic beam and the forces acting on a diametrically loaded disc.