Optical transmission measurements were made on 98% porosity silica aerogel samples under various degrees of uniaxial strain. Uniaxially compressed aerogels exhibit large birefringence, proportional to the amount of compression, up to the 15% strain studied. The birefringence is mostly reversible and reproducible through multiple compression-decompression cycles. Our study demonstrates that uniaxially strained high porosity aerogels can be used as tunable waveplates in a broad spectral range.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0905.1922,
title = {Aerogel Waveplates},
author = {P. Bhupathi and J. Hwang and R. M. Martin and J. Blankstein and L. Jaworski and N. Mulders and D. B. Tanner and Y. Lee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0905.1922},
year = {2009}
}