IMPROVED POLARIZER IN THE INFRARED - 2 WIRE-GRID POLARIZERS IN TANDEM

Citation
Jhwg. Denboer et al., IMPROVED POLARIZER IN THE INFRARED - 2 WIRE-GRID POLARIZERS IN TANDEM, Optics letters, 20(7), 1995, pp. 800-802
Citations number
6
Categorie Soggetti
Optics
Journal title
ISSN journal
01469592
Volume
20
Issue
7
Year of publication
1995
Pages
800 - 802
Database
ISI
SICI code
0146-9592(1995)20:7<800:IPITI->2.0.ZU;2-Q
Abstract
A widely used polarizer in the IR is the wire-grid polarizer. Wire-gri d polarizers with a typical minimal wire spacing of similar to 0.25 mu m perform well in the middle IR and the far IR, but in the near IR th e performance deteriorates as the wavelength approaches the wire spaci ng. A possibility for improving this performance is to put two wire gr ids in tandem with their transmission axes parallel. Starting with the extended Mueller matrix description for a single wire grid, we presen t a mathematical treatment of this tandem polarizer showing that perfo rmance improves quadratically; e.g., a single polarizer extinction rat io of 100 increases to a tandem extinction of 10,000. The improved per formance is also verified experimentally.