Absence of internal refraction with the spatially dispersive index surface of fluorine; discussion of the orthogonality of the Poynting vector to the index surface

Luc Dettwiller (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Scop

Since 2001 the intrinsic birefringence of fluorine has been accessible to experiment. It is known that its intrinsic anisotropy is entirely due to spatial dispersion, and that the index surface of fluorine and crystals with the same symmetry has seven optical axes, four of them intersecting this surface at pairs of conical points. I point out the fact that there is no internal conical refraction, but only simple refraction (and without walkoff), with these conical points. I also explain why the rays are not a priori normal to the index surface in the case of fluorine because of its spatial dispersion; and I discuss two particular cases of spatial dispersion where the Poynting vector remains orthogonal to the index surface.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Luc Dettwiller. Absence of internal refraction with the spatially dispersive index surface of fluorine; discussion of the orthogonality of the Poynting vector to the index surface. Optics Express, 2006, 14 (8), pp.3339-3344. ⟨hal-00869724⟩