POLARIZATION PHASE-STEPPING WITH A SAVART ELEMENT

The imaging properties of a real-time shearing interferometer are pres ented. The use of Savart elements, both as a beam displacer and an ana lyzer in a polarization phase-stepping scheme, is demonstrated in area l-time, two-camera, four-bucket shearing interferometer. A simple calc ulation scheme for ray propagation through uniaxial, birefringent elem ents is presented, and the effects on the image formation through 6-cm -long Savart elements is discussed. (C) 1998 Optical Society of Americ a.