Determination of a property of an optical device

Abstract

A method and an apparatus for determination of properties, e.g. of elements of the Jones matrix of an optical device under test, comprising the steps of: producing an incoming light beam, splitting the light beam into a first light beam and a second light beam, coupling the first light beam, preferably having two parts delayed with respect to each other, with a given initial polarization into the optical device under test, letting the second light beam travel a different path than the first light beam, superimposing the first light beam and the second light beam to produce interference between the first light beam and the second light beam in a resulting superimposed light beam, splitting the superimposed light beam into a third light beam polarization dependent and a fourth light beam, detecting the power of the third and the fourth light beam as a function of frequency when tuning the frequency of the incoming light beam over a given frequency range, deriving optical properties, e.g. elements of the Jones matrix, from the frequency dependency of the detected power.