A novel hyperspectral imaging system has been developed that takes advantage of the tunable path delay between orthogonal polarization states of a liquid crystal variable retarder. The liquid crystal is placed in the optical path of an imaging system and the path delay between the polarization states is varied, causing an interferogram to be generated simultaneously at each pixel. A data set co...

We report a femtosecond intracavity-frequency-doubled optical parametric oscillator that employs a single KTiOAsO crystal for both parametric generation and frequency doubling. This device generates a yellow output beam at 575 nm with 39.4% power conversion efficiency when synchronously pumped by a femtosecond Ti : sapphire laser at a wavelength of 796 nm. An intracavity retarder is employed to...

The extreme ultraviolet (EUV) phase retarder is an important optical element for polarization analysis and conversion of EUV synchrotron radiation. In this paper, a linearly chirped Mo/Si multilayer mirror used to design retarder. With increasing thickness variation the multilayer, reflective retardation between s- p-polarized light increases at first then reaches its maximum value. When bilaye...

Two plates of different birefringence material can be combined to obtain an achromatic wave retarder. In this work, we achieve a correction for the overall retardation of the system that extends the relation to any azimuth. Current techniques for the design of achromatic wave retarders do not present a parameter that characterizes its achromatism on a range of wavelengths. Thus, an achromatic d...

We present two figures of merit based on singular value decomposition, which can be used to assess the noise immunity of a complete Stokes polarimeter. These are used to optimize a polarimeter featuring a rotatable retarder and a fixed polarizer. A retardance of 132 degrees (approximately three-eighths wave) and retarder orientation angles of +/-51.7 degrees and +/-15.1 degrees are found to be ...

This article presents a combined use of a retarder (d-gluconic acid) and an alkaline activator (sodium hydroxide) in a binder system based on ground granulated blast-furnace slag. The properties of the retarder are extending the dormant hydration period and suppressing the generation of strength-giving phases. Different retarder concentrations between 0.25 and 1.00 wt.% regulate the intensity a...

PURPOSE To develop a quantitative understanding of scanning laser polarimetry (SLP) for retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) assessment in glaucoma diagnosis and management. METHODS The Mueller calculus was used to model the polarization optics of SLP. A birefringent retinal structure (RNFL or macula) was represented as a circularly symmetric linear retarder with a radial slow axis. The birefring...

A method has been developed to improve the accuracy with which the polarization state of light can be characterized by the rotating quarter-wave plate technique. Through detailed analysis, verified by experiment, we determine the positions of the optic axes of the retarder and linear polarizer, and the wave plate retardance, to better than 1° for typical signal-to-noise ratios. Accurate determi...

Extension of the dynamic range of liquid crystal tunable Lyot filter is demonstrated by incorporating with it a liquid crystal variable retarder as an eliminator for the third and fourth order peaks. The filter is continuously tunable in the range 500 nm to 900 nm with a nominal width in the range 50nm-100nm. Design procedure is described including the exact solution to the LC director profile ...