Crystal Optical Properties of Inhomogeneous Plates and the Problems of Polarization Tomography of Photoelastic Materials

Using the Jones matrix formalism, crystal optical properties of inhomogeneous material consisting of a pile of weakly birefringent plates are analysed in relation to the cell model adopted in polarization tomography of 3D dielectric tensor field in photoelastic media. It is shown that the material manifests in general an "apparent" optical gyration caused by different orientations of the plates. Relations between the polarimetric parameters and the dielectric tensor components are ascertained for the case of weak optical anisotropy.