Poincaré sphere representation for spatially varying birefringence

Abstract

The Poincaré sphere is a graphical representation in a three-dimensional space for the polarization of light. Similarly, an optical element with spatially varying birefringence can be represented by a surface on a four-dimensional "Poincaré hypersphere". A projection of this surface onto the traditional Poincaré sphere provides an intuitive geometric description of the polarization transformation performed by the element, as well as the induced geometric phase. We apply this formalism to quantify the effects of birefringence on the image quality of an optical system.

11 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Optical spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in inhomogeneous anisotropic media
• Spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in dielectric metasurfaces
• Single shot polarimetry imaging of multicore fiber

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Geometric descriptions for the polarization for nonparaxial optical fields: a tutorial
• Nonlinear localization of light using the Pancharatnam-Berry phase
• Optimal birefringence distributions for star test polarimetry
• Vectorial phase retrieval in super-resolution polarization microscopy