Development of a Mercury Bromide Birefringence Measurement System Based on Brewster’s Angle

Mercury bromide (Hg(2)Br(2)) has been used to develop acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTFs) because it has several advantages, including a high refractive index, a broad optical bandwidth, and a relatively high figure of merit. Therefore, the measurement of its birefringence is a highly important factor for ensuring AOTF quality. However, for single crystals, it is difficult (at the millimeter scale) to quantify the birefringence using an ellipsometer, as this equipment is only designed to conduct measurements on thin films. In this study, a simple birefringence measurement system for Hg(2)Br(2) was developed based on Brewster’s angle at the millimeter scale. The planar distributions of the Hg(2)Br(2) crystal along the (100), (010), and (001) planes were used in the experiments. The developed measurement system can measure the reflected light intensity of the Hg(2)Br(2) crystal depending on the incidence angles (rotations at 0.01125° steps) and can calculate the ordinary and extraordinary refractive indices and birefringence. The calculated birefringence of the Hg(2)Br(2) crystal was 0.8548; this value exhibits an error of 0.64% compared with a value of 0.86 reported in the literature. The developed measurement system demonstrates the ability to be used to evaluate the quality of birefringent single crystals.