Comparison of the maximal achievable contrast in scalar, Stokes and Mueller images

François Goudail (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Scop

We compare the performances of three different polarimetric imaging modalities, scalar, Stokes, and Mueller, in terms of achievable contrast for target detection applications. These modalities require, respectively, 1, 4, and 16 intensity measurements to form the polarimetric image. We show that the technique that leads to the best contrast is the scalar one, which requires only one optimized measurement.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

François Goudail. Comparison of the maximal achievable contrast in scalar, Stokes and Mueller images. Optics Letters, 2010, 35 (15), pp.2600-2602. ⟨hal-00747051⟩