Design, fabrication and testing of achromatic elliptical polarizer

Abstract

A method of designing achromatic elliptical polarizers using a combination of multiple birefringent waveplates is demonstrated. This approach has a simple geometric interpretation and simplifies the problem of designing an achromatic elliptical polarizer to find overlapping arcs on the Poincare sphere. The technique is applied to the design of achromatic elliptical polarizers for a broadband division-of-focal-plane full-Stokes imaging polarimeter for visible wavelength band (lambda = 450nm to 650nm). An achromatic elliptical polarizer sample with a two-layer retarder is fabricated using liquid crystal polymer. The performance of the polarizer sample is measured and compared with the theoretical calculation. For comparison, a superachromatic polarizer design (lambda = 400nm to 1 mu m) is also presented by using three-layer and four-layer retarder configurations. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America