Quantitative polarimetric wavefront imaging

Research Article Vol. 12, No. 7 / July 2025 / Optica 907 Quantitative polarimetric wavefront imaging Baptiste Blochet,1,†,* Grégoire Lelu,1,† Miguel A. Alonso,2,3 AND Marc Guillon1,4,5,6 1Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Saints-Pères Paris Institute for the Neurosciences, F-75006 Paris, France 2Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Centrale Med, Institut Fresnel, UMR 7249, 13397 Marseille, France 3The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA 4Institut Langevin, ESPCI Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Paris 75005, France 5Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France 6marc.guillon@u-paris.fr †These authors contributed equally to this work. *baptiste.blochet@u-paris.fr Received 26 September 2024; revised 17 February 2025; accepted 3 March 2025; published 23 June 2025 Imaging both the polarization and the wavefront of a light beam is a complex task that typically demands several inten- sity acquisitions. Furthermore, sequential acquisition solutions are incompatible with the monitoring of ultra-fast processes. As a possible solution for single-shot wavefront and full-Stokes polarimetric imaging, we propose here a vector-beam lateral shearing interferometer. The device, composed of a patterned polarization-modulating Hartmann mask placed in close vicinity to a camera, encodes all the information in the fringe pattern of a single-image acquisi- tion. By extending lateral shearing interferometry to vector beams, this work opens avenues for characterizing complex metasurfaces andbiologicalsamples. Published by Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.542225 1. INTRODUCTION While optical sensors can only measure the intensity, an important part of the information is typically encoded in the spatial phase (or wavefront) of the beam, as well as in its polarization state (the relative amplitude and phase between two orthogonal polarization components). Imaging the wavefront and/or polarization is of key importance in many applications: phase imaging is typically required for cophasing segmented laser arrays [1] or imaging thin transparent objects [2,3] where it can provide a quantitative meas- ure of the dry mass of cells [4]; polarimetric imaging is of interest for quantitative biological and biomedical applications [5,6], but also for non-destructive