adjective

• Having two different refractive indices.

  ‘The model appeared to require that a gas of hydrogenic atoms would be magnetically birefringent, because the electron would orbit in a plane perpendicular to the field direction.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘When polarization is a concern, linear and birefringent polarizers can be used to remove, reflect, or refract one of the polarization components.’
  • ‘At the macroscopic scale, samples held in test-tubes spontaneously demix under the influence of gravity into a top isotropic phase and a bottom birefringent nematic phase.’
  • ‘A birefringent interference polarizer which may be fabricated from readily available materials using established coextrusion techniques is provided.’
  • ‘In traditional polarization microscopy and orientational spectroscopy, several techniques have been used to determine birefringent and dichroic properties.’