Details: |
The phase associated with propagating light is dynamical phase which depends on the optical path length. Geometric phase is solely dependent on the evolution of electromagnetic wave and not on the optical path. Light beam carrying spatially varying state of polarization generates one variant of the geometric phase, space varying Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) geometric phase, while propagating through homogeneous anisotropic medium. We show that determination of such space varying geometric phase provides a unique way to quantify the space varying polarization state of light using a single-shot interferometric measurement. We demonstrate this concept in a Mach-Zehnder interferometric arrangement using a linearly polarized reference light beam, where full information on the spatially varying polarization state is successfully recovered by quantifying the space varying geometric phase and the contrast of interference. This approach shows considerable potential for instantaneous mapping of complex space varying polarization of light in not only in astronomy but in, biomedical imaging, nanophotonics, etc., where high precision and near real-time measurement of spatial polarization patterns are desirable. |