Effect of chromaticity on quarter-wave retarder performance

When a polarized polychromatic beam passes through a birefringent medium, the constituent spectral components suffer different change of state of polarization. As a result when the beam passes through an analyzer, the intensity of the resultant beam changes depending on the orientation of the analyzer, state of polarization of the input beam, spectral and spatial intensity distribution of the source and the polarizing properties of the birefringent medium. In the present study the intensity variation of the resulting beam passing through a quarter-wave retarder plate is observed theoretically with the variation of the azimuthal angle of the analyzer for monochromatic and polychromatic source of light. A simple experiment is conducted to observe the intensity variation for an incandescent lamp and HeNe laser as polychromatic and monochromatic source of light passing through a birefringent polymer-based quarter-wave retarder plate. The experimentally obtained values are compared with theoretical values and a good agreement is observed.