Polarimetric performance of the European Solar Telescope

I. Ferro Rodríguez; M. Collados; J. Sánchez-Capuchino; C. Quintero Noda; M. Barreto Cabrera

doi:10.1117/12.2628879

26 August 2022 Polarimetric performance of the European Solar Telescope

I. Ferro Rodríguez, M. Collados, J. Sánchez-Capuchino, C. Quintero Noda, M. Barreto Cabrera

Proceedings Volume 12182, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IX; 1218234 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2628879
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Conference Poster

Abstract

Polarization is a fundamental property of the light and is very useful to measure the magnetic field vector of the various features that can be observed in the solar atmosphere. Ideally, a solar telescope should not introduce any polarization to the incoming light that could mask the one coming from the Sun. However, some instrumental polarization is always introduced by the different optical components, because it depends on the coatings used, as well as on the incidence angle and wavelength. The calibration of these instrumental polarization is specially tedious and complicated if it varies with time (as is the usual case for telescopes, when the pointing changes in elevation and azimuth). The European Solar Telescope (EST) has been designed to minimize this spurious temporally-varying instrumental polarization. A numerical model based on geometrical ray tracing has been developed in combination with Zemax Optic Studio (ZOS), in order to estimate the Mueller matrices of the moving optical elements of the telescope. The Mueller matrices have been calculated as a function of wavelength and for different field of view (FoV) positions and telescope (azimuth and elevation) pointing, using generics coatings (aluminium for the primary mirror and silver for the rest of the mirrors). This paper shows the analysis and results of the Mueller matrices that have been obtained, leading to the confirmation that the telescope has an excellent polarimetric performance for all wavelengths, FoVs and pointing directions.

Citation Download Citation

I. Ferro Rodríguez, M. Collados, J. Sánchez-Capuchino, C. Quintero Noda, and M. Barreto Cabrera "Polarimetric performance of the European Solar Telescope", Proc. SPIE 12182, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IX, 1218234 (26 August 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2628879

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