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In 1822 A. Fresnel described an experiment to separate a beam of light intoits right- and left- circular polarization components using chiral interfaces.Fresnel's experiment combined three crystalline quartz prisms of alternatinghandedness to achieve a visible macroscopic separation between the two circularcomponents. Such quartz polyprisms were rather popular optical components inXIXth century but today remain as very little known optical devices. This workshows the analogy between Fresnel's experiment and Stern-Gerlach experimentfrom quantum mechanics since both experiments produce selective deflection ofparticles (photons in case of Fresnel's method) according to their spin angularmomentum. We have studied a historical quartz polyprism with eight chiralinterfaces producing a large spatial separation of light by spin. We have alsoconstructed a modified Fresnel biprism to produce smaller separations and wehave illustrated the process of weak measurement for light. The polarimetricanalysis of a Fresnel polyprism reveals that it acts as a spin angular momentumanalyzer.

A Stern-Gerlach experiment with light: separating photons by spin with the method of A. Fresnel