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Improved polarizer in the infrared: two wire-grid polarizers in tandem
A widely used polarizer in the IR is the wire-grid polarizer. Wire-grid polarizers with a typical minimal wire spacing of ~0.25 microm perform well in the middle IR and the far IR, but in the near IR the performance deteriorates as the wavelength approaches the wire spacing. A possibility for improv...
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Published in: | Optics letters 1995-04, Vol.20 (7), p.800-802 |
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Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | A widely used polarizer in the IR is the wire-grid polarizer. Wire-grid polarizers with a typical minimal wire spacing of ~0.25 microm perform well in the middle IR and the far IR, but in the near IR the performance deteriorates as the wavelength approaches the wire spacing. A possibility for improving this performance is to put two wire grids in tandem with their transmission axes parallel. Starting with the extended Mueller matrix description for a single wire grid, we present a mathematical treatment of this tandem polarizer showing that performance improves quadratically; e.g., a single polarizer extinction ratio of 100 increases to a tandem extinction of 10,000. The improved performance is also verified experimentally. |
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ISSN: | 0146-9592 1539-4794 |
DOI: | 10.1364/ol.20.000800 |