Calibration method for division of focal plane polarimeters in the optical and near infrared regime

Advances in nanofabrication allow for the creation of metallic nanowires acting as linear polarizers in the visible and near infrared regime. The monolithic integration of silicon detectors and pixelated nanowire metallic polarization filters allows for an efficient realization of high resolution polarization imaging sensors. These silicon sensors, known as division of focal plane polarimeters, capture polarization information of the imaged environment from ∼400nm to 1050nm wavelength. The performance of the polarization sensor can be degraded by both irregularities in the fabrication of the nanowires and possible misalignment errors during the final deposition of the optical nanowire filters on the surface of the imaging sensor. In addition, electronic offsets due to the readout circuitry, electronic crosstalk, and optical crosstalk will also negatively affect the quality of the polarization information. Partial compensation for many of these post-fabrication errors can be accomplished through the use of a camera calibration routine. This paper will describe one such routine, and show how its application can increase the quality of measurements in both the degree of linear polarization and angle of polarization in the visible spectrum. The imaging array of the division of focal plane polarimeter is segmented into two by two blocks of superpixels. The calibration method chooses one of the four pixels as a reference, and then a gain and offset for each of the remaining three is computed based on this reference. The output is a calibration matrix for each pixel in the image array.