Dictionary
dou'ble refrac'tion
Optics.
the separation of a ray of light into two unequally refracted, plane-polarized rays of orthogonal polarizations, occurring in crystals in which the velocity of light rays is not the same in all directions. Also called
birefringence. Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.