Measurements of the Cotton-Mouton effect of water and of several aqueous solutions

We report a new measurement of the Cotton-Mouton constant, at 632.8 nm of liquid water, together with measurements, at the same wavelength of the Cotton-Mouton effect in several aqueous ionic solutions of varying concentrations. We show how these results may be combined with literature values of optical Kerr measurements in the same solutions to separate the optical and magnetic susceptibility contributions to the Cotton-Mouton effect