POLARIMETRIC INVESTIGATION OF MATERIALS WITH BOTH LINEAR AND CIRCULARANISOTROPY

We investigate light propagation through materials with both linear an d circular anisotropy and find the relation of the amplitude and polar ization transfer functions to the four anisotropic characteristics: li near circular birefringence, and linear and circular dichroism. We det ermine these four characteristics of anisotropic samples by measuring the output intensity and polarization corresponding to different input polarization azimuths and fitting the theoretical and experimental re sults. In our experiments we have used films of side-chain azobenzene polyesters in which optical anisotropy had been previously induced on illumination with elliptically polarized light.