Snapshot second-harmonic generation polarimeter based on spectral analysis

A new high-speed second-harmonic generation (SHG) polarimetric method is reported. It is based on the spectral analysis of the SHG radiation emitted by a nonlinear medium excited with circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses. The setup uses only passive components for polarization encoding and a fast spectrometer for spectral analysis. The method is validated on a z-cut quartz plate, then on a collagen-rich biological tissue with a view to single image polarization-resolved SHG microscopy.