Spatial resolution of polarization imaging system for illumination of arbitrary coherence

The two-point resolution under the illumination of partially coherent light has been discussed previously and concluded that the measurement of two-point separation depends strongly upon the coherence of the illumination. However, its polarization properties that arise from the vector nature of the electromagnetic field have been ignored in previous studies. Considering multidimensional physical optical field information in the polarized imaging system, we study the spatial resolution namely separations of two points in normalized Stokes parameters based on the unified theory of polarization and coherence. Research results show that the ratio of the measured to the true separation is not equal to unity except for particular values of the actual separation. Some interesting phenomena are found, namely that two resolvable points with certain Stokes parameters will not always be resolved for other Stokes parameters.