Spectropolarimetric investigation of the photoinduced dichroism and birefringence in malachite green/dichromated gelatin films

Abstract

We report a spectropolarimetric investigation of the photoinduced anisotropy in dichromated gelatin films containing the dye malachite green. The investigation is done with a novel Spectral Stokesmeter which measures simultaneously and in real time (20 ms) the spectra of all the Stokes parameters of light in the spectral range 500–750 nm. This made it possible to measure not only the spectrum of the dichroism but also, for the first time to our knowledge, the spectrum of the photoinduced birefringence in these films. The results show that we can measure trustworthy dichroism larger than 0.02 and birefringence larger than 2 × 10−4.