Optical path difference evaluation of the polarization interference imaging spectrometer

The optical path difference (OPD) of the static polarization interference imaging spectrometer and wide-field-of-view polarization interference imaging spectrometer are calculated and analyzed, simultaneously. The analysis results show that the actual total OPD contains two parts, the Savart polariscope introduces the first part, and the second part is introduced when imaging lens reunites two beams in its focal plane. Since the first part OPD accounts for about half of the actual total OPD, it has influences on the resulting spectrum and thus cannot be neglected. The influences of the uniaxial crystal dispersion on the OPD and resulting spectrum are analyzed, and the results show that the OPD decreased with the wavelength, the spectral resolution increased with the wavelength. There are no fixed spectral resolution over the entire detection spectral region, and the spectral resolution would become worse with the increase of the wavelength.