16-BEAM GRATING-BASED DIVISION-OF-AMPLITUDE PHOTOPOLARIMETER

A 16-beam grating-based division-of-amplitude photopolarimeter that em ploys a transmission grating and a linear photodiode detector array ha s been developed and tested. The transmission grating splits the incid ent light beam into 16 orders with essentially uniform intensity distr ibution. Linear polarizers are placed in fanned-out azimuth orientatio ns in different orders, and a quarter-wave retarder is inserted in one order. After calibration, the photopolarimeter makes time-resolved me asurements of all the Stokes parameters of the incident light with a p recision of 0.001. The calibration and testing of the system at 632.8 nm are presented. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America