Spectroscopic Stokes polarimetry based on Fourier transform spectrometer

Abstract

Two methods are proposed for measuring the spectroscopic Stokes parameters using a Fourier transform spectrometer. In the first method, it is designed for single point measurement. The parameters are extracted using an optical setup comprising a white light source, a polarizer set to 0°, a quarter-wave plate and a scanning Michelson interferometer. In the proposed approach, the parameters are extracted from the intensity distributions of the interferograms produced with the quarter-wave plate rotated to 0°, 22.5°, 45° and −45°, respectively. For the second approach, the full-field and dynamic measurement can be designed based upon the first method with special angle design in a polarizer and a quarter-wave plate. Hence, the interferograms of two-dimensional detection also can be simultaneously extracted via a pixelated phase-retarder and polarizer array on a high-speed CCD camera and a parallel read-out circuit with a multi-channel analog to digital converter. Thus, a full-field and dynamic spectroscopic Stokes polarimetry without any rotating components could be developed. The validity of the proposed methods is demonstrated both numerically and experimentally. To the authors' knowledge, this could be the simplest optical arrangement in extracting the spectral Stokes parameters. Importantly, the latter one method avoids the need for rotating components within the optical system and therefore provides an experimentally straightforward means of extracting the dynamic spectral Stokes parameters.