  In the present work it will be shown how the curvature of the outer cylinder
affects Laser Doppler anemometry measurements inside a Taylor-Couette
apparatus. The measurement position and the measured velocity are altered by
curved surfaces. Conventional methods for curvature correction are not
applicable to our setup, and it will be shown how a ray-tracer can be used to
solve this complication.
  By using a ray-tracer the focal position can be calculated, and the velocity
can be corrected. The results of the ray-tracer are verified by measuring an a
priori known velocity field, and after applying refractive corrections good
agreement with theoretical predictions are found. The methods described in this
paper are applied to measure the azimuthal velocity profiles in high Reynolds
number Taylor-Couette flow for the case of outer cylinder rotation.
