Polarization measurement by use of discrete space-variant sub wavelength dielectric gratings

Full Text:Polarization measurement has been widely used for a large range of applications such as ellipsometry bio-imaging, imaging polarimetry and optical communications. A commonly used method is measuring of the time-dependent signal once the beam is transmitted through a photoelastic modulator or a rotating quarter-wave plate followed by an analyzer. The polarization state of the beam can be derived by Fourier analysis of the detected signal. This method, however, requires a sequence of consecutive measurements, thus making it impractical for real-time polarization measurement in an application such as adaptive polarization-mode dispersion compensation in optical communications. Recently, we developed a novel method for real-time polarization measurement by use of a discrete space-variant sub wavelength dielectric grating (DSG). The formation of the grating is done by discrete orientation of the local sub wavelength grooves. The complete polarization analysis of the incident beam is determined by spatial Fourier transform of the near-field intensity distribution transmitted through the DSG followed by a sub wavelength metal polarizer. We realized the gratings for CO2 laser radiation at a wavelength of 10.6 micron on GaAs substrate utilizing advanced photo lithographic and etching techniques. We experimentally demonstrated the ability of our method to measure the polarization state for fully and partially polarized light. Unlike other methods based on Fourier analysis, no active elements are required. It is possible to integrate our polarimeter on a two-dimensional detector array for lab-on chip applications to achieve a high-throughput and low-cost commercial polarimeter for bio sensing. Currently we are investigating the possibility of using far-field measurement of the beam emerging from a DSG for polarization measurement