Polarimeters have broad applications in remote sensing, astronomy, and biomedical imaging to measure a scene’s polarization state. An intrinsic coincident (IC) full-Stokes polarimeter was previously demonstrated and optimized to achieve high temporal and spatial resolution. We optimized the IC polarimeter by introducing additional waveplates or measurement channels and compared it with existing polarimeter architectures under signal-independent Gaussian noise and signal-dependent Poisson noise. The quantitative comparison of noise variances showed that the IC and division-of-amplitude polarimeters have the lowest noise variances due to their higher signal collection ability. Both polarimeters have a factor of 2 and 2 improved signal-to-noise ratio, in the S0 component, for Gaussian and Poisson noises, respectively, as compared to division of time, division of focal plane, and division of aperture polarimeters. While the division of amplitude and IC polarimeters outperforms other approaches, the IC polarimeter has a significantly simpler design, potentially allowing for cost-effective, high-performance polarimetric imaging.
Polarimeters have broad applications in remote sensing, astronomy, and biomedical imaging to measure the emitted, reflected, or transmitted state of polarization (SOP). An Intrinsic Coincident full-Stokes Polarimeter (ICP) was previously demonstrated by our group, in a free space configuration, by using stain-aligned polymer-based organic photovoltaics (OPVs). These were tilted to avoid back-reflection cross-talk. In this paper, we present a theoretical model of a monolithic ICP which considers the back-reflection’s influence. This includes a comparison between the free space model to the new monolithic model. Experimental demonstrations yield less than 3% error between our model and the experiment data.
An intrinsic coincident full-Stokes polarimeter is demonstrated by using stain-aligned polymer-based organic photovoltaics (OPVs) which can preferentially absorb certain polarized states of incident light. The photovoltaic-based polarimeter is capable of measuring four stokes parameters by cascading four semitransparent OPVs in series along the same optical axis. Two wave plates were incorporated into the system to modulate the S3 stokes parameter so as to reduce the condition number of the measurement matrix. The model for the full-Stokes polarimeter was established and validated, demonstrating an average RMS error of 0.84%. The optimization, based on minimizing the condition number of the 4-cell OPV design, showed that a condition number of 2.4 is possible. Performance of this in-line polarimeter concept was compared to other polarimeter architectures, including Division of Time (DoT), Division of Amplitude (DoAm), Division of Focal Plane (DoFP), and Division of Aperture (DoA) from signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) perspective. This in-line polarimeter concept has the potential to enable both high temporal (as compared with a DoT polarimeter) and high spatial resolution (as compared with DoFP and DoA polarimeters). We conclude that the intrinsic design has the same ~√2 SNR advantage as the DoAm polarimeter, but with greater compactness.
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