Thermally induced birefringence in Faraday devices made from terbium gallium garnet-polycrystalline ceramics

We have developed a model that describes thermally induced birefringence in polycrystalline ceramics that are exposed to a magnetic field. Conditions under which traditional compensation techniques (for glass and single crystals) can be effective for ceramics have been found. It is shown that a ceramic is almost equivalent to a [111]-oriented crystal if the ratio of the rod length to the grain size is similar to300 or more. In particular, residual depolarization (after the compensation techniques are applied) is inversely proportional to this ratio, which is an important consequence of the random nature of thermally induced birefringence in ceramics. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.