Raman tensor determination of transparent uniaxial crystals and their thin films—a-plane GaN as exemplary case

The classical Raman tensor approach does not work for optically anisotropic materials in general. For the transparency regime, this can be circumvented by using an effective Raman tensor that considers the material's birefringence. In the specific case of an uniaxial crystal with in-plane orientation of principal axis, this effective Raman tensor is similar to the classical one, except for an additional phase factor for each tensor element. This phase is dependent on the sample thickness, which is demonstrated here experimentally via polarization resolved Raman scattering of a-plane GaN thin films. The experimental observations coincide very well with our model predictions.