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Abstract

Light, or rather optics, has provided the means to learn and gather information about the physical world throughout history. The inexorable march of science and technology, has for example, seen the development of the telescope, microscope, camera, optical fibre and laser, to mention but a few. In a world where science moves to ever smaller scales and more specialised problems however, the boundaries of current technology are continually challenged, motivating the search for more sophisticated systems providing greater information content, sensitivity and increased dimensionality.

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. J. Henri Poincaré

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Correspondence to Matthew R. Foreman .

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Foreman, M.R. (2012). Introduction. In: Informational Limits in Optical Polarimetry and Vectorial Imaging. Springer Theses. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28528-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28528-8_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28527-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28528-8

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