Stokes Dynamic Polarimeter for Non-Organic and Organic Samples Characterization

Abstract

The light polarization properties provide relevant information about linear–optical media quality and condition. The Stokes–Mueller formalism is commonly used to represent the polarization properties of the incident light over sample tests. Currently, different Stokes Polarimeters are mainly defined by resolution, acquisition rate, and light to carry out accurate and fast measurements. This work presents the implementation of an automatic Stokes dynamic polarimeter to characterize non-biological and biological material samples. The proposed system is configured to work in the He-Ne laser beam’s reflection or transmission mode to calculate the Mueller matrix. The instrumentation stage includes two asynchronous photoelastic modulators, two nano-stepper motors, and an acquisition data card at 2% of accuracy. The Mueller matrix is numerically calculated by software using the 36 measures method without requiring image processing. Experiments show the efficiency of the proposed optical array to calculate the Mueller matrix in reflection and transmission mode for different samples. The mean squared error is calculated for each element of the obtained matrix using referenced values of the air and a mirror. A comparison with similar works in the literature validates the proposed optical array.

Full-Stokes Retrieving and Configuration Optimization in a Time-Integration Imaging Polarimeter

“…The imaging polarimeter can provide unique additional valuable information, which may not be captured by traditional intensity-based cameras [4]. Thus, it has been widely used in various scenarios such as target detection [5], material characterization [6,7], remote sensing [8], biomedical imaging [9,10], and astronomy [11][12][13], etc. The existing polarimeter includes four classic types, i.e., division of time polarimeter (DoTP), division of focal plane polarimeter (DoFP), division of amplitude polarimeter (DoAmP) and division of aperture polarimeter (DoAP).…”

Optical Sensors Technology and Applications

“…The polarization of light represents a formidable tool for the development of innovative methods for the control of products and manufacturing processes. Three of the papers in this Special Issue exploit polarization properties for proposing innovative experimental approaches in very different fields [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. In Ref.…”

“…Ref. [ 2 ] addresses a completely different field of application of polarization. In fact, this paper presents the implementation of an automatic Stokes dynamic polarimeter to characterize non-biological and biological material samples.…”