Polypropylene Embedded Metal-Mesh Broadband Achromatic Half Wave Plate for Millimeter Wavelengths

Abstract

We describe a novel multi-layered metal mesh achromatic half wave plate for use in astronomical polarimetric instruments. The half wave plate is designed to operate across the frequency range from 125-250 GHz. The wave plate is manufactured from 12-layers of thin film metallic inductive and capacitive grids patterned onto polypropylene sheets, which are then bonded together using a hot pressing technique. Transmission line modelling and 3-D electromagnetic simulations are used to optimize the parameters of the metal-mesh patterns and to evaluate their optical properties. A prototype half wave plate has been fabricated and its performance characterized in a polarizing Fourier transform spectrometer. The device performance is consistent with the modelling although the measured differential phase shift for two orthogonal polarizations is lower than expected. This difference is likely to result from imperfect patterning of individual layers and misalignment of the grids during manufacture.

14 pages, 13 Figures, 1 Table

References in corpus (4)

• First season QUaD CMB temperature and polarization power spectra
• A millimeter-wave antireflection coating for cryogenic silicon lenses
• A New Artificial Dielectric Metamaterial and its Application as a THz Anti-Reflection Coating
• Analysis of performance of three- and five-stack achromatic half-wave plates at millimeter wavelengths

Cited by in corpus (5)

• SWIPE: a bolometric polarimeter for the Large-Scale Polarization Explorer
• Empirical modelling of the BLASTPol achromatic half-wave plate for precision submillimetre polarimetry
• A LEKID-based CMB instrument design for large-scale observations in Greenland
• Development and application of metamaterial-based Half-Wave Plates for the NIKA and NIKA2 polarimeters
• Studies of Systematic Uncertainties for Simons Observatory: Polarization Modulator Related Effects