Precise characterization of polarizing prisms by optical localization analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-precision optical localization method to accurately characterize polarizing prisms, surpassing traditional measurement limits and enabling improved quantitative imaging techniques.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel localization analysis approach for precise prism characterization, achieving sub-0.5 urad error, significantly better than existing methods.

Findings

Localization analysis surpasses diffraction limit in precision

Error margin is below 0.5 urad, much smaller than manufacturer tolerances

Method enables high-accuracy prism measurement for advanced imaging technologies

Abstract

We utilize the localization analysis method to precisely determine the light beam positions with the spatial separation beyond the optical diffraction limit. By such a direct spatial measurement, the associated optical setup is built to characterize the beam-shear angle of polarizing prisms that refract the light propagation according to polarization. We use the Nomarski prisms to demonstrate our method. The statistical error is below 0.5 urad, which is two orders of magnitudes smaller than the tolerance value given by most prism manufacturers. Our method provides a stand-alone characterization of prisms with a high accuracy for many quantitative imaging technologies such as the orientation-free DIC microscope and the dual-focus fluorescence correlation spectroscopy.