System-level calibration of achromatic λ/4 wave-plate

Polarization measurement error may be caused by achromatic /4 wave-plate due to the retarder error and different absorption coefficients for the light oscillating along the fast axis and slow axis of wave-plate. We studied the system-level calibration effect of achromatic /4 wave-plate in full-polarized charge coupled-device (CCD) camera based on the radiometric model by using the integrating sphere and the high-precision auxiliary rotation polarizer. Experimental result shows that there are the variation of the retarder and absorption coefficients of achromatic /4 wave-plate for the different operating wavelengths and bandwidths in full-polarized CCD camera. The achromatic effects of 650 nm (phase retardation 88.90) and 750 nm (phase retardation 88.90) are better than that of 850 nm (phase retardation 84.33) of our achromatic /4 wave-plate in full-polarized CCD camera. The phase retardation precision in our system-level calibration is better than 0.8 through the analysis of phase retardation standard error.