1) What is a reflective conoscope?

- It is an optical apparatus that is designed primarily for the determination of optical axis position in anisotropic thin films and thick materials that are laying on an opaque or reflective substrate.
- It operates by using the light that passes through the anisotropic medium being investigated and that is reflected back to the apparatus by the opaque / reflective substrate.
- Usually conoscopy is made by transmission(*).
- The reflection mode, developed by us, enhances the sensitivity of the usual method and allows several other functionalities (see To what is used).
- Its sensitivity depends on the sample thickness (more precisely the product between thickness and sample birefringence) and on the radiation wavelength.
- The apparatus can work both in white light and in monochromatic (filtered) light (red, green and blue).
 

Operating principle of the reflective conoscope 

            ^(*) M. Born, E. Wolf - Principles of Optics, 7^th edition, Cambridge University Press, (1999)