Single-shot measurement of polarization state at low light field using Mueller-mapping star test polarimetry

Abstract

Polarization measurement is often completed in the scenes with low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in some fields, such as biomedical sensing and remote sensing, resulting in the requirement for the polarimeter to conduct the real-time measurement of the polarization state at low light field. However, accurate measurement of the polarization state at low light field is challenging due to background-noise interference. Herein, we develop a Mueller-mapping star test polarimetry (MMSTP) method by quantitatively linking the Mueller matrix of a space-variant birefringence device and the polarization-dependent intensity distribution. Combined with a normalized least-squares method that accounts for the spatial distribution characteristics of photons at low light field, in addition to a low-pass fast-Fourier-transform filter, the proposed method can calculate polarization states from a single irradiance image at low light field with higher accuracy. Experimental results show that the proposed method can significantly improve the measurement accuracy of polarization states compared with the classical division-of-time Stokes polarimeters at low light field.