Abstract

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.

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History
Original Manuscript: May 5, 2009
Manuscript Accepted: June 4, 2009
Revised Manuscript: June 4, 2009
Published: June 9, 2009

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Author Affiliations

Jackson Blankstein

Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, West Palm Beach, Florida 33401, USA

Norbert Mulders

Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA

Jungseek Hwang

Department of Physics, Pusan National University, Busan 609-735, Republic of Korea

Pradeep Bhupathi, Rodica M. Martin, Lukas Jaworski, David B. Tanner, Yoonseok Lee

Department of Physics, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611-8440, USA

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