Direct measurement of the magnetic and deformation contribution to birefringence in the weakly-ferromagnetic phase of hematite (α-Fe2O3)
Merkulov V. S. , Rudashevskii E. G., LeGalle A.
It is shown experimentally that 98% of the entire birefringence in a-Fe203, with the Hght propagating along the C3 axis, is due to the polarizability anisotropy connected with the magnetizations of the sublattices and their orientation relative to the crystallographic axes.