Analysis of spatial pseudodepolarizers in imaging systems

The objective of a number of optical instruments is to measure the intensity accurately without bias to incident polarization state. One method to overcome polarization bias in optical systems is the insertion of a spatial pseudodepolarizer. Both the degree of pseudodepolarization and image degradation (from the polarization aberrations of the pseudodepolarizer) are analyzed for two depolarizer designs: the Cornu pseudodepolarizer effective for linearly polarized light and the dual Babinet compensator pseudodepolarizer effective for all incident polarization states. The image analysis uses the matrix formalism presented in a previous paper (“Diffraction image formation and analysis in optical systems with polarization aberrations I: Formulation and example”) to describe the polarization dependence of the the diffraction patterns and optical transfer function.