Characterization of Solar Telescope Polarization Properties Across the Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrum. Case Study: The Dunn Solar Telescope

Abstract

Accurate astrophysical polarimetry requires a proper characterization of the polarization properties of the telescope and instrumentation employed to obtain the observations. Determining the telescope and instrument Muller matrix is becoming increasingly difficult with the increase in aperture size of the new and upcoming solar telescopes. We have carried out a detailed multi-wavelength characterization of the Dunn Solar Telescope (DST) at the National Solar Observatory/Sacramento Peak as a case study and explore various possibilites for the determination of its polarimetric properties. We show that the telescope model proposed in this paper is more suitable than that in previous work in that it describes better the wavelength dependence of aluminum-coated mirrors. We explore the adequacy of the degrees of freedom allowed by the model using a novel mathematical formalism. Finally, we investigate the use of polarimeter calibration data taken at different times of the day to characterize the telescope and find that very valuable information on the telescope properties can be obtained in this manner. The results are also consistent with the entrance window polarizer measurements, opening very interesting possibilities for the calibration of future large-aperture solar telescopes such as the ATST or the EST.

To be submitted to A&A (instrumentation section)

References in corpus (4)

• The instrumental polarization of the Nasmyth focus polarimetric differential imager NAOS/CONICA (NACO) at the VLT - Implications for time-resolved polarimetric measurements of Sgr A*
• Polarization properties of real aluminum mirrors; I. Influence of the aluminum oxide layer
• The intrinsic dimensionality of spectro-polarimetric data
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• Inferring telescope polarization properties through spectral lines without linear polarization
• Calibrating and Stabilizing Spectropolarimeters with Charge Shuffling and Daytime Sky Measurements
• Daytime Sky Polarization Calibration Limitations
• Developments of Multi-wavelength Spectro-Polarimeter on the Domeless Solar Telescope at Hida Observatory
• A Study on Correcting the Effect of Polarization Crosstalk in Full-Disk Solar Photospheric Magnetic Fields Observations