Detection of polarization state of a polarized light using azimuthally symmetric dye-doped liquid crystals

Detection of polarization state of a polarized light using azimuthally symmetric dye-doped liquid crystals (AS-DdLCs) is demonstrated. The first method is that the image of a polarized light with unknown polarization state after passing through the AS-DdLCs is captured by a charge-coupled device and transformed to a gray-level image, which is then analyzed by the designed program to identify the polarization state of the polarized light. The second method of comparing images using a database to identify the polarization state of an unknown polarized light is proposed. The techniques to increase detection accuracy of the two methods, and the comparison of the two methods are also discussed.