Work

Full Poincaré polarimetry enabled through physical inference

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: While polarization sensing is vital in many areas of research, with applications spanning from microscopy to aerospace, traditional approaches are limited by method-related error amplification, accumulation, and pre-processing steps, constraining the performance of single-shot polarimetry. Here, we propose a measurement paradigm that circumvents these limitations, based on the use of a universal full Poincaré generator to map all polarization analyzer states into a single vectorially structured light field. All vector components are analyzed in a single shot, extracting the vectorial state through inference from a physical model of the resulting image, providing a single-step sensing procedure. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we use a common graded index (GRIN) optic as our mapping device and show mean errors of < 1 % for each vector component. Our work paves the way for next-generation polarimetry, impacting a wide variety of applications that rely on vector measurement.

Source: Optica

DOI: 10.1364/optica.452646