Diagnostics for spectropolarimetry and magnetography

Abstract

An assessment on the capabilities of modern spectropolarimeters and magnetographs is in order since most of our astrophysical results rely upon the accuracy of the instrumentation and on the sensitivity of the observables to variations of the sought physical parameters. A contribution to such an assessment will be presented in this talk where emphasis will be made on the use of the so-called response functions to gauge the probing capabilities of spectral lines and on an analytical approach to estimate the uncertainties in the results in terms of instrumental effects. The Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX) and the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) will be used as study cases.

To be published in "Physics of Sun and Star Spots", Proceedings of IAU Symp. 273, D.P. Choudhary & A.C. Cadavid (eds.), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

References in corpus (4)

• The usefulness of analytic response functions
• Two-dimensional solar spectropolarimetry with the KIS/IAA Visible Imaging Polarimeter
• On spectropolarimetric measurements with visible lines
• Retrieval of solar magnetic fields from high-spatial resolution filtergraph data: the Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX)