Imaging of small birefringent objects by polarized light conventional and confocal microscopes

In this work a theory for describing small birefringent objects imaged in polarized light conventional and confocal microscopes is developed. Due to the polarization dependent nature of the problem a full electromagnetic theory is used. The solution permits the analysis of a polarized light optical microscope imaging small birefringent objects of arbitrary type, including form birefringence, as long as it can be characterized by a third-rank dielectric tensor. The optical microscope is equipped with two Babinet-Soleil compensators on the illumination side that can be freely adjusted to set the polarization state of the illumination from linear through elliptical to circular. Numerical examples are presented for the most important practical cases of images of small birefringent objects.