Evaluation of the systematic errors of polarimetric measurements: Application to measurements of the gyration tensors of α-quartz by the HAUP

It was shown in the course of developing the high-accuracy universal polarimeter (HAUP) that any polarimetric optical analyses cannot be free from a systematic error γ originating in the parasitic ellipticities of the constituent Nicol prisms. A method by which one can remove γ in the HAUP method is presented. This has been successfully applied to measurements of the gyration tensors and birefringence of two enantiomorphic crystals of α-quartz. It was found that the order of magnitude of this error for a polarizer is about 10-4 and consequently γ lies between 10-4 and 10-3 in typical optical systems. Our results, g11=5.7±0.52x10-5 and g33=-13.6±0.52x10-5 with a wavelength of 6328 A for laevorotatory quartz at 300 K are in good agreement with some of the previous reports. (orig.)