Loading…

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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics letters 1995-04, Vol.20 (7), p.800-802
Main Authors: Boer, J H, Kroesen, G M, de Zeeuw, W, de Hoog, F J
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
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.
ISSN:0146-9592
1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/ol.20.000800