Polarization-preserving wavefront rotator

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to make wavefront rotators preserve polarization regardless of rotation angle, using synchronized half-wave plates, demonstrated experimentally with minimal polarization error.

Contribution

The authors introduce a universal technique employing synchronized half-wave plates to achieve polarization-independent wavefront rotation for any base angle or input polarization.

Findings

Experimental demonstration with a 30° base angle K-mirror.

Achieved approximately 1% polarization error.

Method is effective for any wavefront rotator and input polarization.

Abstract

A K-mirror rotates the wavefront of an incident optical field. However, the rotation always introduces polarization changes in the transmitted field. This is a serious concern for applications ranging from astronomical image derotation to orbital angular momentum spectrum characterization in photonic quantum technology. Recent efforts have shown that the polarization change can be minimized significantly, but these require either a very small base angle that limits the field of view, or mirrors with a customized refractive index. Making the transmitted polarization state completely independent of the rotation angle has remained an open problem. In this work, we show that placing half-wave plates before and after a K-mirror and rotating them synchronously at half the K-mirror rotation angle makes the polarization change in the transmitted field exactly independent of the rotation angle. This works for any wavefront rotator, any base angle, any mirror refractive index, and any input state of polarization. We experimentally demonstrate the approach using a K-mirror with a base angle of $30^{\circ}$, which gives the largest field of view among practical designs, and find a mean polarization error of ~1%, limited only by the retardance imperfection of commercially available half-wave plates. This has significant practical implications for applications that require precise wavefront rotation without polarization change.