Analysis and Simulation of Poincaré Sphere—Application to Ellipsometry

Abstract

Elliptically polarised light is characterised by its azimuth and ellipticity. The sense of rotation of the ellipse described by the light vector can be represented geometrically by a point on a sphere called Poincaré sphere which enables us to visualise any changes in the polarisation state introduced by optically active devices unlike in an ellipsometric setup. Analysis of Poincaré sphere is carried out and an ellipsometric setup comprising of a polariser and analyser is studied and simulated with Müller matrix technique with the polarisation state represented on the generated Poincaré sphere.

Indexing terms:

• Poincaré sphere
• Ellipsometric setup
• Müller matrix technique

Additional information

Notes on contributors

V C Ravichandran

V C Ravichandran was born at Karur, Tamilnadu on 3rd September 1951. He received BE and ME degrees from University of Madras and PhD from Anna Universtiy Chennai in 1971, 1979 and 1986 respectively. From 1972 he worked as Associate Lecturer, Lecturer and Assistant Professor in School of ECE, College of Engineering Guindy, Chennai. He was awarded Post Doctoral Fellow in Fiber Optics under Commonwealth academic Staff Fellowship Programme from University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom in 1988–89. He was a visiting faculty from October-December 1993 under Indo-GTZ programme in High Frequency Institute, Aachen, Germany.

Currently he is a Professor and Head of Communication Systems Division in School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Anna University, Chennai and engaged in teaching and research in the areas of optical signal processing and CDMA techniques, semiconductor laser sources modeling and satellite communication systems. He has forty research publications and international/national conference proceedings to his credit. He is a member of ISTE and OSI, India.