Simplified analysis and suppression of polarization aberration in planar symmetric optical systems

Abstract

Polarized remote sensing imaging has attracted more attention in recent years due to its wider detection information dimension compared to traditional imaging methods. However, the inherent instrument errors in optical systems can lead to errors in the polarization state of the incident and outgoing light, which is the polarization aberration of the optical system, resulting in a decrease in polarization detection accuracy. We propose a polarization aberration simplification calculation method for planar symmetric optical systems, by what only three ray samples are needed to obtain the distribution of polarization aberrations within the pupil. This method has a calculation accuracy close to traditional methods, and the sampling rate is 0.003 times that of traditional methods. Based on this, we designed a merit function that optimizes both wavefront and polarization aberrations simultaneously. It is found that diattenuation and retardance of the optical system are 62% and 58% of the original, and the polarization crosstalk term is reduced by 37% when the polarization weight factor takes an appropriate value. And at the same time, the wavefront aberration has also been well optimized.