Polarimetric Scatterometry using Unconventional Polarization States

We introduce a class of unconventional, spatially inhomogeneous polarized beams, and the polarization elements that create them for their application in polarized light scatterometry.;One such beam may be formed by the superposition of right and left circularly polarized beams using a customized Nomarski prism. Such superposition results in a beam that traverses the equator of the Poincare sphere in one of the beam's spatial dimensions, such that, an image of light scattered from the beam yields the phase functions of the scatterers without the need for temporal modulation of the input polarization. We show that by illuminating an ensemble of Mie scatterers with this beam, it is possible to recover the scattering phase functions (components of the scattering Mueller matrix). The method is qualified by using the retrieved phase functions to estimate the size and refractive index of the scatterers.;This document also describes the application of Star Test Polarimetry to image sampling, and describes the design and fabrication of a prototype single frame image sampling polarimeter that can be used in particle scatterometry. The method makes use of a Stress Engineered Optical Element (SEO) placed in the pupil plane of an optical system to induce a polarization dependent point spread function (PSF) in the image plane. With calibration, a straightforward algorithm can extract the Stokes parameters from the shape of the point spread function in a single irradiance measurement. The image sampling polarimeter described in the dissertation can quantify the variation of Stokes parameters across a given object or scene of scatterers in real time with a single irradiance measurement. We demonstrate the use of such a technique in the areas of imaging polarimetry, polarization mapping and polarization microscopy.;We conclude our efforts by combining the illumination and the measurement into a single scattering experiment, in which a suspension of Mie scatterers illuminated by the one dimensional Poincare beam and measured with the image sampling polarimeter yields the phase matrix elements of the scatterers in a single polarimetric measurement.