August 2019
Spotlight Summary by Johann Toudert
Compact and high-speed Stokes polarimeter using three-way polarization-preserving beam splitters
Measuring the polarization of optical beams, which is fully characterized by their four–parameter Stokes vector, is needed for applications in several areas such as biology, material characterization, or communications. Table-top polarimeters installed in research labs enable accurately determining the Stokes vector, by analyzing the incident light with rotating or electrically–modulated polarization elements and a detector. However, such a configuration is not practical for field measurements because it usually causes a limited device robustness. In this context, Shuhei Shibata and coworkers propose a polarimeter design which enables a characterization of the Stokes vector without moving nor electrically–modulated elements. The incident beam is separated by a suitably designed beamsplitter assembly into three beams with the same polarization. These three beams are sent onto suitably oriented polarized beam splitters, one of them after passing through a quarter-wave plate. This yields six beams whose intensities measured by six detectors give access to the normalized Stokes parameters. The proposed design enables real-time measurements at 30 KHz with errors below 1%.
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Article Information
Compact and high-speed Stokes polarimeter using three-way polarization-preserving beam splitters
Shuhei Shibata, Nathan Hagen, Shuichi Kawabata, and Yukitoshi Otani
Appl. Opt. 58(21) 5644-5649 (2019) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF