Direct Spatially Resolved Snapshot Interferometric Phase and Stokes Vector Extraction by Using an Imaging PolarCam

Abstract

We extract the 3D phase Δ and the Stokes parameter S 3 of a transmissive anisotropic object spatially using an interferometric PolarCam. Four parallel interferograms with a phase shift of π/2 between the images are captured in a single snapshot and then reconstructed by the four-bucket algorithm to extract the 3D phase of the object. The S 3 is then calculated directly from the obtained 3D phase Δ. The extracted results of Δ and S 3 were compared with those extracted from the non-interferometric PolarCam and the Thorlabs polarimeter, and the results match quite well. The merit of using the interferometric PolarCam is that no mechanical movement mechanisms are included, and hence the Δ and S 3 of the object can be extracted, with high accuracy and within a part of a second (three times faster than non-interferometric PolarCam and Thorlabs polarimeter methods). Moreover, this method can be applied in the field of the dynamic spectro–interferometric PolarCam and can be implemented using swept-wavelength approaches.