Measurements of polarization-dependent angle-resolved light scattering from individual microscopic samples using Fourier transform light scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method combining quantitative phase imaging and numerical propagation to measure polarization-dependent angle-resolved light scattering from individual microscopic samples with high precision, including spectroscopic extensions.

Contribution

The paper presents a new technique for measuring polarization-dependent scattering from single microscopic objects using Fourier transform light scattering with spectroscopic capabilities.

Findings

Successfully measured scattering patterns of liquid crystal droplets and silver nanowires.

Achieved high sensitivity and precision in polarization-dependent scattering measurements.

Extended the method to include wavelength-scanning for spectroscopic analysis.

Abstract

We present a method to measure the vector-field light scattering of individual microscopic objects. The polarization-dependent optical field images are measured with quantitative phase imaging at the sample plane, and then numerically propagated to the far-field plane. This approach allows the two-dimensional polarization-dependent angle-resolved light scattered patterns from individual object to be obtained with high precision and sensitivity. Using this method, we present the measurements of the polarization-dependent light scattering of a liquid crystal droplet and individual silver nanowires over scattering angles of 50{\deg}. In addition, the spectroscopic extension of the polarization-dependent angle-resolved light scattering is demonstrated using wavelength-scanning illumination.