Deriving Telescope Mueller Matrices Using Daytime Sky Polarization Observations

Abstract

Telescopes often modify the input polarization of a source so that the measured circular or linear output state of the optical signal can be signficantly different from the input. This mixing, or polarization "cross-talk", is defined by the optical system Mueller matrix. We describe here an efficient method for recovering the input polarization state of the light and the full 4 x 4 Mueller matrix of the telescope with an accuracy of a few percent without external masks or telescope hardware modification. Observations of the bright, highly polarized daytime sky using the Haleakala 3.7m AEOS telescope and a coude spectropolarimeter demonstrate the technique.

Accepted for publication in PASP

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• Calibrating and Stabilizing Spectropolarimeters with Charge Shuffling and Daytime Sky Measurements
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• WALOP-South: A Four-Camera One-Shot Imaging Polarimeter for PASIPHAE Survey. Paper II -- Polarimetric Modelling and Calibration
• InnoPOL: an EMCCD imaging polarimeter and 85-element curvature AO system on the 3.6-m AEOS telescope for cost effective polarimetric speckle suppression
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• An investigation of the Eigenvalue Calibration Method (ECM) using GASP for non-imaging and imaging detectors
• Polarization Modeling and Predictions for DKIST Part 4: Calibration Accuracy Over Field of View, Retardance Spatial Uniformity And Achromat Design Sensitivity