Polarization imaging using an anisotropic diffraction grating and liquid crystal retarders.

Abstract

We present a simple yet versatile and practical polarization camera for imaging full Stokes parameters. The developed system consists of one anisotropic diffraction grating plate and two electro-switchable retarders and obtains in nearly real-time full Stokes images of the light scattered from the objects. The monochromatic S3 image is obtained by physically separating the right and left circularly polarized components with the aid of the anisotropic grating, and S1 and S2 images are obtained by fast electro-switching the retardation of each retarder. The simple polarization imaging system has possible applications in various types of imaging systems and especially should be incorporated into optical microscopes as well as imaging cameras in future work.