Conical diffraction of a Gaussian beam with a two crystal cascade.

Internal conical diffraction by biaxial crystals with aligned optic axes, known as cascade conical diffraction is investigated. Formulae giving the intensity distributions for a cascade conically diffracted Gaussian beam are shown to compare well with experiment for the cases of two biaxial crystals with the same and different lengths and with the second crystal rotated with respect to the first. The effects of placing half wave-plates between crystals are also investigated.