FIGURE 4.

Distributions of the angles of orientation of the HbS polymer spherulites defined in Fig. 2 b. (a and b) Illumination with linearly polarized light, the orientation of plane of polarization φ′ is indicated and marked with a solid arrow; the direction at 90° from that of the plane of polarization is marked with a shaded arrow. (c) Illumination with elliptically polarized light, ratio between axes of ellipse is shown; halfwidth of distribution is indicated with double-sided arrow. (d) Fiber nucleation in solution deoxy-HbS by temperature jump without illumination. C_deoxy-HbS = 261 mg ml⁻¹, horizontal dashed line indicates mean value of distribution. Total number of analyzed spherulites: (a) 470, (b) 586, (c) 398, and (d) 162. (e) The nucleation rate, J (diamonds), and delay times, θ (circles), at three temperatures during illumination by linearly (solid symbols) and elliptically (open symbols) polarized light. (f) Schematic of light polarization states used in experiments: linearly polarized light has ratio of intensities of the two perpendicular directions of 1:68; elliptically polarize light: 1:1.6. Circularly polarized or nonpolarized light, not used in experiments discussed here, would have a ratio of 1:1.