Optimization of a four-temporal phase lock for photoelastic-modulated polarimetry

Abstract

A set of four-temporal phases in photoelastic-modulated polarimetry is proposed to measure the Stokes parameters. In comparison with the conventional polarimetry, which uses a set of four-spatial angles by rotating a quarter-wave plate to obtain the polarimetric parameters, this temporal type polarimetry not only can reduce the time consumption but also can avoid the measurement error from the beam deviation. In addition, based on singular value decomposition, the figure of merit of this temporal phase technique can improve its signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of 2 in comparison with the rotating quarter-wave plate. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America