On the use of polarization modulation in combined interferometry and polarimetry

The combination of interferometry and polarimetry using modulation of the input polarization is considered. For this case an expression for the interferometric phase is derived showing the presence of an additional time-varying term with respect to the case without modulation. It is found that for finite plasma birefringence the additional term is always important even if a linear input polarization is used, in contrast to the case where birefringence is zero. If the contribution of the additional term is eliminated by filtering, a consequence is a loss of time resolution on the interferometric measurement.