A new polarimeter scheme based on solid state semiconductors
Author
Castro Gutierrez,Heiner
Abstract
A new kind of polarimeter scheme is suggested using solid state semiconductors. The new approach is based on the modulation over the intensities of the diffracted beams through a two-dimensional chiral grating, reported recently. It will be demonstrated that at least four intensity measurements of no equivalent diffracted beams are needed in order to estimate the polarization state of the incident beam. The incident beam azimuth was varied by routing a linear polarizer lens mounting in a stepped motor. The intensities of four diffracted beams were measured using a screen, a CCD camera and some algorithms running in a computer. The LabVIEW development environment software was used for controlling the hardware and for presenting the results. MATLAB© was used for calculating the intensities of the diffracted beams and computing the azimuth of the incident beam. Although both the azimuth and ellipticity should be estimated, the experiments show that only the azimuth estimation yields accurate results. The ellipticity cannot be estimated with precision. The error on the azimuth estimation depends on the variation in the power of the incident beam. It was found that the azimuth estimation is accurate between [0,140) and (150,180] degrees. The cause of huge errors in the azimuth found between 140 and 150 degrees are kept unknown.