Interference visibility of the wide-field-of-view polarization interference imaging spectrometer (WPIIS)

Wide-field-of-view polarization interference imaging spectrometer (WPIIS) is one kind of birefringent interferometers utilized for imaging and spectroscopy. WPIIS employs polarization components (the polarizer, analyzer, the field-widened Savart polariscope and an achromatic half wave plate (AHWP) sandwiched between the two Savart plates) for interferogram acquisition. To acquire excellent reconstructed spectrum, the whole system should ensure high fringe visibility. In this work, polarization deviation and retardation deviation of polarization components are considered into the interference visibility. The resultant visibility is investigated in detail. It is shown that polarization and retardation deviations would severely degrade the final spectrum estimations. The corresponding quantitative tolerances are also provided in which cases we can get attractive visibility higher than 0.97. This work would provide actual suggestions for system design, spectroscopic estimations and performance optimization of any system composed of polarization components.