Abstract. The recently proposed [1] simple interferometric method was applied in the study of a perfect three-layered system, formed by a glass prism and a metal attenuator. The gap formed by the glass and metal surfaces forms a plane parallel micro cuvette. In our case this cuvette is filled symmetrically with two liquids with Fermi distribution of the extinction coefficient (the imaginary part of the complex index of refraction) in the region of their mutual solution. In this manner an almost stepwise variation of the optical thickness of the separation is introduced. The specific distribution of the phase shift between the p- and s-components of the reflected field was deduced from the output signal of the shearing polarization interferometer. An experiment with a glass prism-liquid-plane silicon attenuator is described. The results are compared with the theoretical predictions. For angles of incidence larger than the critical one a good agreement between theory and experiment was observed.

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