Fast polarization state detection by division-of-amplitude in a simple configuration setup

A new measurement system for imaging ellipsometry has been developed with the ability of taking fast measurements on planar and even highly curved surfaces. This is achieved by a special laser scanner containing four photodetectors to measure the state of polarization with a sampling rate in the megahertz range. Up to now only three of four Stokes parameters can be measured simultaneously. In this work some modifications to the actual detector are proposed which provide the opportunity to measure the whole Stokes parameter. In contrast to the previous work on the division of-amplitude photopolarimeter (DOAP) using a special optical beam splitter, the polarization state detector presented here uses only standard optical components while keeping the adjustment effort low.