Development of Kerr electro-optic 3-d electric field measuring technique and its experimental verification

We have developed a method to measure 3-dimensional electric field distributions in liquid dielectrics using the Kerr electro-optic effect combined with ac field modulation and circularly polarized light. We derived theoretical relations between an arbitrary electric field vector and a transmitted light intensity. The derived equations were verified by comparing the theoretical electric field profile with the experimental one in transformer oil with an axisymmetric electrode configuration, i.e. measured electric field vectors proved to agree well with theoretical ones. The light intensities experimentally obtained were transformed into axisymmetric electrode configuration by Abel transformation to calculate the electric field distribution.