Error analysis and Stokes parameter measurement of rotating quarter-wave plate polarimeter

In this paper, we present a simple Stokes parameter measurement method for a rotating quarter-wave plate polarimeter. This method is used to construct a model to describe the principle of how the magnitudes of errors influence the deviation of the output light Stokes parameter, on the basis of accuracy analysis of the retardance error of the quarter-wave plate, the misalignment of the analyzing polarizer, and the phase shift of the measured signals, which will help us to determine the magnitudes of these errors and then to acquire the correct results of Stokes parameters. The method is validated by the experiments on left-handed circularly polarized and linear horizontal polarization beams. With the improved method, the maximum measurement deviations of Stokes parameters for these two different polarized states are reduced from 2.72% to 2.68%, and from 3.83% to 1.06% respectively. Our results demonstrate that the proposed method can be used as a promising approach to Stokes parameter measurement for a rotating quarter-wave plate polarimeter.