Circular birefringence

Circular dicliroism has been a useful servant to tire biophysical chemist since it allows tire non-invasive detennination of secondary stmcture (a-helices and P-sheets) in dissolved biopolymers. Due to tire dissymmetry of tliese stmctures (containing chiral centres) tliey are biaxial and show circular birefringence. Circular dicliroism is tlie Kramers-Kronig transfonnation of tlie resulting optical rotatory dispersion. The spectral window useful for distinguishing between a-helices and so on lies in tlie region 200-250 nm and hence is masked by certain salts. The metliod as usually applied is only semi-quantitative, since tlie measured optical rotations also depend on tlie exact amino acid sequence. 

A medium is said to be circularly dichroic—it absorbs differently according to the state of circular polarization of the light—if kL — kR 0 it is circularly birefringent, which is manifested by optical rotation, if nL — nR = 0. Optical rotation and circular dichroism are not independent phenomena, but are connected by Kramers-Kronig relations ... 

This is the form of the scattering matrix for any medium with rotational symmetry even if all the particles are not identical in shape and composition. A collection of optically active spheres is perhaps the simplest example of a particulate medium which is symmetric under all rotations but not under reflection. Mirror asymmetry in a collection of randomly oriented particles can arise either from the shape of the particles (corkscrews, for example) or from optical activity (circular birefringence and circular dichroism). 

An interstellar dust cloud containing aligned particles may be looked upon as a linearly birefringent (and possibly linearly dichroic) medium (van de Hulst, 1957, p. 58) the cloud acts like a retarder. We showed at the end of Section 2.11 that linearly polarized light becomes circularly polarized upon transmission by a retarder. The first clear evidence for this kind of polarization mechanism was reported by Martin (1972), where light from the Crab Nebula was the source of linearly polarized incident light. 

Rotation of the polarization plane (or the axes of the dichroic ellipse) by a small angle a occurs when the phases for the two circular components become different, which requires a difference in the refractive index n (Pearlman and Nguyen 1991). This effect is called circular birefringence. The change of optical rotation with wavelength is called optical rotary dispersion (ORD). 

The selective reflection of circularly polarized light on radiation of normal light is also exhibited by the cholesteric polymers. Like the 1-l.c. systems, the Grandjean-texture is formed spontaneously, if the polymer is sandwiched between glass plates as shown in Fig. 23. The measurements of indicate no difference to low molar mass systems. In Fig. 24 VHT) is shown for the induced cholesteric polymers, whose birefringence was discussed above (refer to Table 8, copolymers No. 4, m = 6). The different curves refer to different mole fractions of the chiral comonomer. With... 

This result demonstrates the tendency of an optically active material to rotate the electric vector as it propagates through the sample. Materials possessing this property are normally composed of molecules having chiral symmetry. This effect leads to circular birefringence and circular dichroism, two optical properties that are frequently used in the characterization of biomaterials. 

Analogous to the definitions of linear birefringence and linear dichroism following equations (2.15) and (2.21), the form of equation (2.30) suggests the following optical anisotropies for circularly polarized light ... 

Circular birefringence will induce a differential retardation in the phase of the orthogonal states of circularly polarized light. Circular dichroism, on the other hand, results in anisotropic attenuation of left- and right-circularly polarized light. The Jones matrix of circularly dichroic materials is normally written as ... 

The Faraday effect refers to the induction of circular birefringence following the... 

Schematic diagram showing the integration of a polarization modulated birefringence apparatus within a laser Doppler velocimeter. This shows the side view. L light source (a diode laser was used) PSG rotating half-wave plate design LS lens FC flow cell (flow is into the plane of the figure) CP circular polarizer D detector 2D-T two dimensional translation stage 3D-T three dimensional translation stage LDVP laser Doppler velocimeter probe.

Noncoaxial Birefringent/Dichroic Element Containing Circular Birefringence and Circular Dichroism... 

This composite material contains both linear and circular birefringence and dichroism. The orientation of the linear birefringence is at 0 and the orientation of the linear dichroism is at 9". 

Linear and Circular Birefringence/Dichroic Element in the Limit of Small Anisotropies... 

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