A new method for measuring the refractive index of glass

It is well known in optics that the refractive index is an important optical parameter of material. A novel method to measure refractive index of glass has been reported in this paper. This method can be used to measure the refractive index of the special laboratory prepared glass which is small, irregularly shaped by measuring its absorption spectrum. And we have measured the refractive index of the laboratory prepared germanium-lead glass (1) (70GeO(2)-10Pb-10BaO -10K(2)O), germanium-lead glass (2) (60GeO(2)-20Pb-10BaO-10K(2)O), germanium-lead glass (3) (50GeO(2)-30Pb-10BaO-10K(2)O) by measuring the absorption spectra of them with the new method. The experiment results show that the peaks position of the absorption shift forward the long wavelength and the refractive indexes increase with the increasing of Pb in germanium lead glasses. The above obtained refractive indexes are similar with the data which measured by the spectroscopic ellipsometry and the error less than 1%. The error analysis indicates that this method has high degree accuracy. We predict that the new method has a potential application in refractive index measurement for glass.