A method for measuring the rotatory power of a chiral medium

Abstract

A light beam coming from a circularly polarized heterodyne light source passes through a chiral medium, its rotation angle is just half of the phase difference between p- and s- polarization components. And this phase difference can be measured accurately with heterodyne interferometric technique. The rotatory power is obtained by dividing the estimated rotation angle with its path length. This method has many advantages, such as, high stability, high resolution, easy operation, and real-time measurement.