A Mueller matrix measurement technique based on a division-of-aperture polarimetric camera

When an object is illuminated by an incoming light described by a Stokes vector, the outgoing light scattered, reflected or transmitted from the object is modulated and its polarization property can be expressed by another Stokes vector. The transformation relation between the incoming and the outgoing Stokes vectors is called the Mueller matrix. The Mueller matrix completely characterizes the optical properties of the light scattered or transmitted from the object, including the diattenuation, the retardance and the depolarization. So, how to measure the Mueller matrix efficiently and accurately becomes considerably significant for its practical applications. We propose a new method for Mueller matrix fast acquisition based on a division-of-aperture simultaneous polarimetric imaging technique. Traditional methods for obtaining the 16 elements of the Mueller matrix require at least 16 polarimetric measurements. While in our method it is enough by just changing the states of polarization (SOPs) of the input light 4 times. These time-saving and easy calculating features are contributed to our specific polarimetric camera, where a full-Stokes vector is obtained easily since 3 linear SOPs (0°, 45°, 90°) and 1 circular SOP can be recorded simultaneously by sharing the same detector. To simply verify the effectiveness of our method, polarizers (45°, 90°), and quarter-wave plates (0°, 45°) are chosen as samples to be measured. Experimental results show that they are consistent with the theoretical results, both in the Mueller matrix and the corresponding images. We predict that this method for Mueller matrix rapid acquisition can get wide potential applications.