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Crystals Birefringent Crystals Calcite 

Calcite is a negative uniaxial crystal that has high birefringence, wide spectral transmission and availability in reasonably sized rhombs. Although is a fairly soft crystal and is easily scratched, it is ideal material used as visible and near IR polarizers, such as Glan Taylor, Glan Thompson and Glan laser.

Carefully selct the raw calcite crystals by inspecting them with a cw green laser beam. We have perfected a number of proprietary processes for cutting, grinding and polishing good quality optical surfaces for calcite prism. These skills are evident in the high quality of the finished components, and enable polarizers to be used with very high peak power lasers.


Basic Properties of Calcite crystals
Please view Birefringent Physical Properties (PDF Format)

Refractive Indices, Birefringence ( D n = n e - n o ) and Walk-off Angle at 45 “ ( r ):
n o = 1.6557, n e = 1.4852, D n = -0.1705, r = 6.20° at 0.63 m m
n o = 1.6629, n e = 1.4885, D n = -0.1744, r = 6.32° at 1.30 m m
Sellmeier Equation ( l in m m):
n o 2 = 2.69705 + 0.0192064/( l ^2 - 0.01820) - 0.0151624 l ^2
n e 2 = 2.18438 + 0.0087309/( l^ 2 - 0.01018) - 0.0024411 l ^2

Specifications of Calcite

Surface Quality

20/10 Scratch and Dig

Beam Deviation

<3 arc min.

Optical Axis Orientation

+/-0.5°

Flatness

<l /4 @ 632.8 nm

Transmission Wavefront Distortion

< l /2 @632.8 nm

AR-coating

R<0.5%


 

 
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