title: Stokes polarimeter optimization in the presence of shot and Gaussian noise.
abstract: An error minimization method is presented for Stokes polarimeters applicable when the detected signals are affected by a combination of shot and Gaussian noise. The expectation of the Stokes vector variance is used as a performance measure. This measure is compared with the condition number of a polarization state analyzer matrix that is commonly used as a figure of merit. We show that a polarimeter with the minimum condition number is not necessarily optimal. The approach is used to optimize existing prism based polarimeters giving improvements in the performance when shot-noise cannot be neglected.
authors.affiliation: The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, SW7 2BW, UK. d.lara@imperial.ac.uk
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lara
authors.forename: Carl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Paterson
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002138:Calibration; D004867:Equipment Design; D007834:Lasers; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016011:Normal Distribution; D019721:Ophthalmoscopes; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*