Polarimetric Calibration of Large-Aperture Telescopes I: The Beam-Expansion Method

Abstract

This paper describes a concept for the high-accuracy absolute calibration of the instrumental polarization introduced by the primary mirror of a large-aperture telescope. This procedure requires a small aperture with polarization calibration optics (e.g., mounted on the dome) followed by a lens that opens the beam to illuminate the entire surface of the mirror. The Jones matrix corresponding to this calibration setup (with a diverging incident beam) is related to that of the normal observing setup (with a collimated incident beam) by an approximate correction term. Numerical models of parabolic on-axis and off-axis mirrors with surface imperfections are used to explore its accuracy.

Journal of the Optical Society of America-A, in press

References in corpus (1)

• Signatures of Incomplete Paschen-Back Splitting in the Polarization Profiles of the He I 10830 multiplet

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Deriving Telescope Mueller Matrices Using Daytime Sky Polarization Observations
• Characterization of Solar Telescope Polarization Properties Across the Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrum. Case Study: The Dunn Solar Telescope
• Polarimetric Calibration of Large-Aperture Telescopes II: The sub-aperture method
• Inferring telescope polarization properties through spectral lines without linear polarization
• Daytime Sky Polarization Calibration Limitations
• Polarization Modeling and Predictions for DKIST Part 5: Impacts of enhanced mirror and dichroic coatings on system polarization calibration
• Polarization Modeling and Predictions for DKIST Part 4: Calibration Accuracy Over Field of View, Retardance Spatial Uniformity And Achromat Design Sensitivity
• Polarization Modeling and Predictions for DKIST Part 1: Telescope and example instrument configurations