Theoretical description of a method for simultaneous measurement of phase and arbitrary polarization

If a wave passes a polarization manipulating object on the one hand the polarization distribution is changed, but on the other there usually results also an additional phase term. With common methods only one measurand, either the polarization (e.g. via Stokes parameters) or the phase (e.g. via phase shifting interferometry (PSI)) is determined, without taking the other one into account. In previous publications a new interferometric method for the simultaneous measurement of phase and polarization distribution of a light wave was introduced. The new idea is to change the states of polarization of the reference beam in addition to the well-known phase shifting method. With appropriate evaluation algorithms the phase and polarization of the object beam can be assigned simultaneously in one measurement cycle. But so far only locally linear polarization distributions could be evaluated. For circular or even arbitrary elliptical polarized distributions both the measurement setup and the evaluation algorithms become more complex. In this contribution some theoretical investigations on this improvement are presented.