Correction of the first-order errors produced by polarizing devices by means of the Mueller-coherence matrix for polarimetric measurements

A method is presented to calculate the exact Mueller matrix starting from the slightly erroneous measured values. The correction of the measured Mueller matrix is realized considering the first-order errors introduced by the polarizing devices, and using the SU(4)-O+(6) homomorphism to find the Mueller matrices of the non-ideal devices. A practical example is used to illustrate the method and the variation produced in the matrix elements. The method can be useful in any polarimetric technique.