An instrument for measuring low optical rotation angle

Abstract

This paper develops a linear heterodyne interferometer based on phase-locked extraction for measuring low optical rotation angle. The validity of the proposed design is demonstrated by measuring a half-wave plate. The average relative error in the measured rotation angle of the half-wave plate is determined as just 0.74%. When applied to the measurement of glucose solutions with concentrations ranging from 0 to 1.2 g/dl, the average relative error in the measured rotation angle of glucose solutions is determined to be 1.46%. The correlation coefficient between the measured rotation angle and the glucose concentration is determined to be 0.999991, while the standard deviation is just 0.00051°. The current system is capable of measuring glucose concentration as low as 0.01 g/dl with an error of 6.67% in the rotation angle measurement. Overall, the experimental results demonstrate the ability of the proposed system to obtain highly accurate measurement of the optical rotation angle.