US Patent 7283207 Exposure apparatus

In an exposure apparatus, light flux from a light source is serially converted into any of a plurality of polarized light beams perpendicular to each other on Poincare sphere and is output. This polarized light beam is injected into a projection optical system or the like to be converted into a converted polarized light beam based. With a linear polarizer or a linear phase retarder being properly inserted into an optical path of the converted polarized light beam, a light intensity is measured. Stokes parameters of the converted polarized light beam are calculated based on the measured light intensity.