In this work, we present an experimental method to characterize variable optical retarders, which can have linear or non-linear behavior of the retardance variation. A theoretical analysis of such is presented using a combination of Stokes vectors and Mueller matrixes for three different optical retarders. A straightforward method for phase unwrapping, or reconstructing the original phase from the measured retardance, is proposed that yields high-accuracy results. This work can be used in an undergraduate optics lab to help students understand the concepts of retardance and its control and also how variable retardance devices work.
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