Revealing complex optical phenomena through vectorial metrics
Abstract
Advances in vectorial polarisation-resolved imaging are bringing new capabilities to applications ranging from fundamental physics through to clinical diagnosis. Imaging polarimetry requires determination of the Mueller matrix (MM) at every point, providing a complete description of an object's vectorial properties. Despite forming a comprehensive representation, the MM does not usually provide easily-interpretable information about the object's internal structure. Certain simpler vectorial metrics are derived from subsets of the MM elements. These metrics permit extraction of signatures that provide direct indicators of hidden optical properties of complex systems, while featuring an intriguing asymmetry about what information can or cannot be inferred via these metrics. We harness such characteristics to reveal the spin-Hall effect of light, infer microscopic structure within laser-written photonic waveguides, and conduct rapid pathological diagnosis through analysis of healthy and cancerous tissue. This provides new insight for the broader usage of such asymmetric inferred vectorial information.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2107.09624,
title = {Revealing complex optical phenomena through vectorial metrics},
author = {Chao He and Jintao Chang and Patrick S. Salter and Yuanxing Shen and Ben Dai and Pengcheng Li and Yihan Jin and Samlan Chandran Thodika and Mengmeng Li and Aziz Tariq and Jingyu Wang and Jacopo Antonello and Yang Dong and Ji Qi and Jianyu Lin and Honghui He and Daniel S. Elson and Min Zhang and Hui Ma and Martin J. Booth},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.09624},
year = {2021}
}