Snapshot imaging polarimeter using modified Savart polariscopes

In this paper, based on the combination of two modified Savart polariscopes, we present a snapshot imaging polarimeter and show that the carrier frequency is two times higher than that of the snapshot imaging polarimeter using two conventional Savart polariscopes. The signal-to-noise ratio and the spatial resolution of imagery in each channel are improved due to the increase of the carrier frequency when we filter the channels to recover the Stokes vector images. Moreover, compared with conventional imaging polarimetry, the remarkable advantage of the proposed instrument is that it is also simple, compact, miniature, snapshotted, and static (no moving parts). To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed snapshot imaging polarimeter, the numerical simulation of a design example is presented in detail. (c) 2012 Optical Society of America