Vilas Prieto, José LuisSánchez Brea, Luis MiguelBernabeu Martínez, Eusebio2023-06-192023-06-192013-03-201559-128X10.1364/AO.52.001892https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/33596© 2013 Optical Society of America. This work was supported by the project “Photonic Transceiver for Secure Communications Space” of the European Space Agency with Tecnológica Ingeniería, Calidad y Ensayos, and by project DPI2011-27851 of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion of Spain.Two plates of different birefringence material can be combined to obtain an achromatic wave retarder. In this work, we achieve a correction for the overall retardation of the system that extends the relation to any azimuth. Current techniques for the design of achromatic wave retarders do not present a parameter that characterizes its achromatism on a range of wavelengths. Thus, an achromatic degree has been introduced, in order to determine the optimal achromatic design composed with retarder plates for a spectrum of incident light. In particular, we have optimized a quarter retarder using two wave plates for the visible spectrum. Our technique has been compared to previous results, showing significant improvement.engjournal articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1364/AO.52.001892http://www.opticsinfobase.orgopen access535Linear RetardersQuartzÓptica (Física)2209.19 Óptica Física