Performance analysis for a polarization imaging system with rotational alignment errors from polarizing elements

Abstract

In this paper, we give a spatial frequency analysis of polarization imaging system and study the effects of rotational alignment errors of the polarizer from their ideal orientations. With the help of newly proposed Optical Transfer Matrix (OTM) for a diffraction-limited polarization imaging system, we investigate the effects of polarization-sensitive aberrations from the generalized pupil matrix at the exit pupil plane. Here, polarization aberrations stemming from the angular alignment errors of a linear polarizer has been demonstrated. The performance of a polarization imaging system with rotational alignment error has also been evaluated based on a cost function based on OTM.