[en] We apply spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) to identify secondary phases in Cu2ZnSnSe4 (CZTSe) absorbers and to investigate the optical properties of CZTSe. A detailed optical model is used to extract the optical parameters, such as refractive index and extinction coefficient in order to extrapolate the band gap values of CZTSe samples, and to obtain information about the presence of secondary phases at the front and back sides of the samples. We show that SE can be used as a non-destructive method for detection of the secondary phases ZnSe and MoSe2 and to extrapolate the band gap values of CZTSe phase. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America