A Stokes polarimetric light microscopy view of liquid crystal droplets

Gou, J, Shen, T ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0323-4983, Bao, P, Ramos Angulo, JL and Evans, SD 2021, 'A Stokes polarimetric light microscopy view of liquid crystal droplets' , Scientific Reports, 11 (1) , p. 16329.

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Abstract

The optical characteristics of materials, such as their magnetooptical effects, birefringence, optical activities, linear and circular dichroism, are probed via the polarisation states of light transmitted through or reflected from the specimens. As such, the measurements of the polarisation states play an important role in many research disciplines. Experimentally, Stokes parameters provide a full description of the polarisation states of light. We report the implementation of a dual- photoelastic modulator based polarimeter in a light microscope, enabling the determination of Stokes parameters at each pixel. As a case study, polarimetric images of liquid crystal droplets of different internal structures are obtained, showing their distinct polarisation characteristics. We demonstrate that the prototype Stokes polarimetric microscope allows the quantitative determination of the polarisation characteristics of light at the object plane and enables the access of the information of full polarisation states as compared to a conventional cross polariser microscope. This work shows that Stokes polarimetric microscopy may find potential applications in a wide range of research fields.

Item Type:	Article
Schools:	Schools > School of Computing, Science and Engineering > Salford Innovation Research Centre
Journal or Publication Title:	Scientific Reports
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
ISSN:	2045-2322
Related URLs:	Publication
Depositing User:	USIR Admin
Date Deposited:	26 Jul 2021 14:45
Last Modified:	16 Feb 2022 07:25
URI:	https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/61299

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