Polarization Angle Measurements Research Articles

Runaway electron plateau current profile reconstruction from synchrotron imaging and Ar-II line polarization angle measurements in DIII-D

Current profile reconstructions are obtained for high current ( Ip≃550 kA) post-disruption runaway electron (RE) plateau plasmas in DIII-D. Two novel methods of measuring the RE current profile in high-current RE plateaus are introduced and compared: localization of the q = 2 rational surface using visible synchrotron emission (SE) imaging and the measurement of the polarization angle of line-integrated Ar-II line emission. The two methods are found to be consistent with each other within the data uncertainties. Different simulations of the RE current profile are compared with the measurements: the toroidal fluid RE model is found to best fit the data, within the measurement uncertainties. In addition to introducing two novel methods to measure the RE current profile and validating present simulation capabilities, this work demonstrates that instabilities can grow at q = 2 and q = 1 surfaces without necessarily causing a RE final loss instability. Numerical simulations are also presented to elucidate the role of these instabilities on synchrotron emission.

An interplay between optical rectification and transient photocurrent effect on THz pulse generation from bulk MoS2 layered crystal

Development of novel schemes for efficient terahertz (THz) generation from transition metal dichalcogenides are useful for realizing integrated THz devices based on them and also, understanding of the related fundamental processes from such studies will guide to suitable designs. Here, we report the THz emission efficiency of bulk MoS2 layered crystal at varying femtosecond excitation wavelengths, from 550 nm to the telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm. By using both the below bandgap excitation at longer wavelengths and the above bandgap excitation at shorter wavelengths, we resolve THz emission contributions from resonant and non-resonant optical rectification (OR) processes, and the surface field induced transient photocurrent effect (TPE). A relatively much larger contribution to THz emission from the TPE than the resonant OR is measured for the above bandgap excitation. We have measured a clear difference between the resonant and nonresonant OR processes. The pure OR part is exclusively determined from detailed experiments using excitation intensity, polarization angle, and azimuthal angle dependent measurements. For the above bandgap excitation, the THz emission gets highly saturated with the increasing excitation intensity. Also, the value of the saturation intensity increases (decreases) with the excitation photon energy (wavelength). Interestingly, we find that the linear polarization angle and the azimuthal angle dependent THz signal due to resonant OR is π/2 phase offset relative to that due to the nonresonant OR.

Wide-field polarization angle measurements of a LiteBIRD low-frequency telescope scaled antenna

Wide-field polarization angle measurements of a LiteBIRD low-frequency telescope scaled antenna

Simultaneous radio and optical polarimetry of GRB 191221B afterglow

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous transients in the universe and are utilized as probes of early stars, gravitational wave counterparts, and collisionless shock physics. In spite of studies on polarimetry of GRBs in individual wavelengths that characterized intriguing properties of prompt emission and afterglow, no coordinated multi-wavelength measurements have yet been performed. Here, we report the first coordinated simultaneous polarimetry in the optical and radio bands for the afterglow associated with the typical long GRB 191221B. Our observations successfully caught the radio emission, which is not affected by synchrotron self-absorption, and show that the emission is depolarized in the radio band compared to the optical one. Our simultaneous polarization angle measurement and temporal polarization monitoring indicate the existence of cool electrons that increase the estimate of jet kinetic energy by a factor of $>$ 4 for this GRB afterglow. Further coordinated multi-wavelength polarimetric campaigns would improve our understanding of the total jet energies and magnetic field configurations in the emission regions of various types of GRBs, which are required to comprehend the mass scales of their progenitor systems and the physics of collisionless shocks.

An approach for fabrication of multi-directional polarizer array by picosecond laser micro-processing

A method for preparing a multi-directional polarization filter by using one-dimensional nano-grating polarizers is proposed. A picosecond laser is employed to precisely ablate aluminum film on TAC (Triacetate Cellulose) substrate to form grating pixels. The effects of the key laser processing parameters (power density I, line spacing b, number of repetitions σ) on the ablation morphology and optical transmittance are studied. A three-layer polarization filter is aligned and stacked together with the directions of 0°, 45°, and 90°, respectively to obtain the Stokes parameters. The Rigorous Coupled Wave Analysis (RCWA) theory is deployed to calculate the polarization properties of one-dimensional metal gratings. The polarization performance of the three-dimensional subwavelength metal aluminum polarizer is experimentally evaluated. Results show that the transmittance of the laser-ablated area increases to more than 96 % from the original 84 % at the wavelength of 550 nm. The polarization filter prepared in our study is applied to the polarization angle measurement. The original error of the polarization angle is measured to be less than ± 0.3°, which indicates a high degree of measurement accuracy. The proposed method is flexible, cost-effective, maskless, no-need-of stringent cleanroom environment, and of high speed. It has the potential for applications in the field of polarization navigation, image processing, and polarization imaging.

Analysis of the Motional Stark Effect (MSE) diagnostic to measure the rotational transform and current profile in the Large Helical Device.

The analysis method of the Motional Stark Effect (MSE) diagnostic to measure the rotational transform and current profiles in the Large Helical Device has been improved. This was done by using the Variational Moments Equilibrium Code to calculate an equilibrium database for various pressure profiles and current profiles. This method looks for the radial profile of the rotational transform in the equilibrium database that gives the best fit to the polarization angle profiles measured with the MSE diagnostic. This analysis improves the measurements of rotational transform, especially near the magnetic axis, where the sensitivity of the polarization angle measurements becomes low and the uncertainty due to error in the estimation of the Pfirsch-Schlüter current becomes large. The radial profiles of the rotational transform and current profiles for Electron Cyclotron Current Drive and Neutral Beam Current Drive are obtained in the new analysis method with a sufficiently high accuracy to discuss the discrepancy of the current density profiles between the measurements and the calculations.

Absolute calibration of the polarisation angle for future CMB B-mode experiments from current and future measurements of the Crab nebula

A tremendous international effort is currently dedicated to observing the so-called primordial B modes of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarisation. If measured, this faint signal imprinted by the primordial gravitational wave background, would be an evidence of the inflation epoch and quantify its energy scale, providing a rigorous test of fundamental physics far beyond the reach of accelerators. At the unprecedented sensitivity level that the new generation of CMB experiments aims to reach, every uncontrolled instrumental systematic effect will potentially result in an analysis bias that is larger than the much sought-after CMB B-mode signal. The absolute calibration of the polarisation angle is particularly important in this sense, as any associated error will end up in a leakage from the much larger E modes into B modes. The Crab nebula (Tau A), with its bright microwave synchrotron emission, is one of the few objects in the sky that can be used as absolute polarisation calibrators. In this communication, we review the best current constraints on its polarization angle from 23 to 353 GHz, at typical angular scales for CMB observations, from WMAP, IRAM XPOL, Planck and NIKA data. We will show that these polarization angle measurements are compatible with a constant angle and we will present a study of the uncertainty on this mean angle, making different considerations on how to combine the individual measurement errors. For each of the cases, the potential impact on the CMB B-mode spectrum and on the recovered r parameter will be explored.

Cramer-Rao Lower Bound for SoOp-R-Based Root-Zone Soil Moisture Remote Sensing.

Signals of opportunity (SoOp) reflectometry (SoOp-R) is a maturing field for geophysical remote sensing as evidenced by the growing number of airborne and spaceborne experiments. As this approach receives more attention, it is worth analyzing SoOp-R's capabilities to retrieve subsurface soil moisture (SM) by leveraging communication and navigation satellite transmitters. In this research, the CRLB is used to identify the effects of variable SoOp-R parameters on the best achievable estimation error for root-zone soil moisture (RZSM). This study investigates the use of multiple frequency, polarization, and incidence angle measurement configurations on a two-layered dielectric profile. The results also detail the effects of variable SM conditions on the capability of SoOp-R systems to predict subsurface SM. The most prevalent observation is the importance of using at least two frequencies to limit uncertainties from subsurface SM estimates. If at least two frequencies are used, the CRLB of a profile is retrievable within the root-zone depending on the surface SM content as well as the number of independent measurements of the profile. For a depth of 30 cm, it is observed that a CRLB corresponding to 4% RZSM estimation accuracy is achievable with as few as 2 dual-frequency-based SoOp-R measurements. For this depth, increasing number of measurements provided by polarization and incidence angle allow for sensing of increasingly wet SM profile structures. This study, overall, details a methodology by which SoOp-R receiver system can be designed to achieve a desired CRLB using a trade-off study between the available measurements and SM profile.

JCMT BISTRO Survey Observations of the Ophiuchus Molecular Cloud: Dust Grain Alignment Properties Inferred Using a Ricean Noise Model

Abstract The dependence of the polarization fraction p on total intensity I in polarized submillimeter emission measurements is typically parameterized as p ∝ I −α (α ≤ 1) and used to infer dust grain alignment efficiency in star-forming regions, with an index α = 1 indicating near-total lack of alignment of grains with the magnetic field. In this work, we demonstrate that the non-Gaussian noise characteristics of the polarization fraction may produce apparent measurements of α ∼ 1 even in data with significant signal-to-noise in Stokes Q, U, and I emission, and so with robust measurements of polarization angle. We present a simple model demonstrating this behavior and propose a criterion by which well-characterized measurements of the polarization fraction may be identified. We demonstrate that where our model is applicable, α can be recovered by fitting the p–I relationship with the mean of the Rice distribution without statistical debiasing of the polarization fraction. We apply our model to JCMT BISTRO Survey POL-2 850 μm observations of three clumps in the Ophiuchus molecular cloud, finding that in the externally illuminated Oph A region, α ≈ 0.34, while in the more isolated Oph B and C, despite their differing star formation histories, α ∼ 0.6–0.7. Our results thus suggest that dust grain alignment in dense gas is more strongly influenced by the incident interstellar radiation field than by star formation history. We further find that grains may remain aligned with the magnetic field at significantly higher gas densities than has previously been believed, thus allowing investigation of magnetic field properties within star-forming clumps and cores.

Attitude measurement and simulation of two-dimensional position sensitive detector

Aiming at the problems of high error rate of quantum key distribution of physical star and inaccurate location information of motion platform in space, using partial differential equations and finite element tool values to analyze the potential field distribution of PSD. Combined with MATLAB software theory derivation and model simulation for the application of the lateral photoelectric effect of two-dimensional photoelectric position sensor in three-dimensional attitude measurement, especially deepening the theoretical and simulation aspects of lateral photoelectric effect. The experimental data analysis shows that the 2D-PSD detector can realize the displacement resolution precision of XY axis 2um and the polarization angle measurement accuracy within 0.5°of the working interval, which proves the feasibility of 2D attitude measurement by 2D-PSD.

Full-Stokes polarimetry with circularly polarized feeds

We present an analysis pipeline that enables the recovery of reliable information for all four Stokes parameters with high accuracy. Its novelty relies on the effective treatment of the instrumental effects even before the computation of the Stokes parameters, contrary to conventionally used methods such as that based on the Müller matrix. For instance, instrumental linear polarization is corrected across the whole telescope beam and significant StokesQandUcan be recovered even when the recorded signals are severely corrupted by instrumental effects. The accuracy we reach in terms of polarization degree is of the order of 0.1–0.2%. The polarization angles are determined with an accuracy of almost 1°. The presented methodology was applied to recover the linear and circular polarization of around 150 active galactic nuclei, which were monitored between July 2010 and April 2016 with the Effelsberg 100-m telescope at 4.85 GHz and 8.35 GHz with a median cadence of 1.2 months. The polarized emission of the Moon was used to calibrate the polarization angle measurements. Our analysis showed a small system-induced rotation of about 1° at both observing frequencies. Over the examined period, five sources have significant and stable linear polarization; three sources remain constantly linearly unpolarized; and a total of 11 sources have stable circular polarization degreemc, four of them with non-zeromc. We also identify eight sources that maintain a stable polarization angle. All this is provided to the community for future polarization observations reference. We finally show that our analysis method is conceptually different from those traditionally used and performs better than the Müller matrix method. Although it has been developed for a system equipped with circularly polarized feeds, it can easily be generalized to systems with linearly polarized feeds as well.

Optical properties of a dichroic dye-doped liquid-crystal grating and its application to optical rotation measurement.

The diffraction properties of a twisted nematic liquid-crystal (TN-LC) grating, in which a dichroic dye was doped, were investigated experimentally in terms of the applicability to an optical system for determining the polarization angle of incident linearly polarized light. The main reason to dope a nematic LC material with a dichroic dye was to enhance the polarization dependence of the diffracted light intensities for the positive and negative first orders. We found the best values of the applied voltage for application in polarization angle measurement. The TN-LC grating with a high polarization sensibility was applied to the optical system for measuring the concentration of an optically active component in a liquid specimen. As a result, the applicability of the proposed optical system was revealed experimentally. Furthermore, the cause of the random measurement error is discussed briefly.

Design of a dispersion interferometer combined with a polarimeter to increase the electron density measurement reliability on ITER.

A dispersion interferometer is a reliable density measurement system and is being designed as a complementary density diagnostic on ITER. The dispersion interferometer is inherently insensitive to mechanical vibrations, and a combined polarimeter with the same line of sight can correct fringe jump errors. A proof of the principle of the CO2 laser dispersion interferometer combined with the PEM polarimeter was recently conducted, where the phase shift and the polarization angle were successfully measured simultaneously. Standard deviations of the line-average density and the polarization angle measurements over 1 s are 9 × 1016 m-2 and 0.19°, respectively, with a time constant of 100 μs. Drifts of the zero point, which determine the resolution in steady-state operation, correspond to 0.25% and 1% of the phase shift and the Faraday rotation angle expected on ITER.

Polarization measurement analysis

With the forthcoming release of high precision polarization measurements, such as from the Planck satellite, the metrology of polarization needs to be improved. In particular, it is important to have full knowledge of the noise properties when estimating polarization fraction and polarization angle, which suffer from well-known biases. While strong simplifying assumptions have usually been made in polarization analysis, we present a method for including the full covariance matrix of the Stokes parameters in estimates of the distributions of the polarization fraction and angle. We thereby quantified the impact of the noise properties on the biases in the observational quantities and derived analytical expressions for the probability density functions of these quantities that take the full complexity of the covariance matrix into account, including the Stokes I intensity components. We performed Monte Carlo simulations to explore the impact of the noise properties on the statistical variance and bias of the polarization fraction and angle. We show that for low variations (< 10%) of the effective ellipticity between the Q and U components around the symmetrical case the covariance matrix may be simplified as is usually done, with a negligible impact on the bias. For S/Ns with intensity lower than 10, the uncertainty on the total intensity is shown to drastically increase the uncertainty of the polarization fraction but not the relative bias of the polarization fraction, while a 10% correlation between the intensity and the polarized components does not significantly affect the bias of the polarization fraction. We compare estimates of the uncertainties that affect polarization measurements, addressing limitations of the estimates of the S/N, and we show how to build conservative confidence intervals for polarization fraction and angle simultaneously. This study, which is the first in a set of papers dedicated to analysing polarization measurements, focuses on the basic polarization fraction and angle measurements. It covers the noise regime where the complexity of the covariance matrix may be largely neglected in order to perform further analysis. A companion paper focuses on the best estimators of the polarization fraction and angle and on their associated uncertainties.

HIGH ENERGY POLARIZATION OF BLAZARS: DETECTION PROSPECTS

Emission from blazar jets in the ultraviolet, optical, and infrared is polarized. If these low-energy photons were inverse-Compton scattered, the upscattered high-energy photons retain a fraction of the polarization. Current and future X-ray and gamma-ray polarimeters such as INTEGRAL-SPI, PoGOLITE, X-Calibur, Gamma-Ray Burst Polarimeter, GEMS-like missions, ASTRO-H, and POLARIX have the potential to discover polarized X-rays and gamma-rays from blazar jets for the first time. Detection of such polarization will open a qualitatively new window into high-energy blazar emission; actual measurements of polarization degree and angle will quantitatively test theories of jet emission mechanisms. We examine the detection prospects of blazars by these polarimetry missions using examples of 3C 279, PKS 1510-089, and 3C 454.3, bright sources with relatively high degrees of low-energy polarization. We conclude that while balloon polarimeters will be challenged to detect blazars within reasonable observational times (with X-Calibur offering the most promising prospects), space-based missions should detect the brightest blazars for polarization fractions down to a few percent. Typical flaring activity of blazars could boost the overall number of polarimetric detections by nearly a factor of five to six purely accounting for flux increase of the brightest of the comprehensive, all-sky, Fermi-LAT blazar distribution. The instantaneous increase in the number of detections is approximately a factor of two, assuming a duty cycle of 20% for every source. The detectability of particular blazars may be reduced if variations in the flux and polarization fraction are anticorrelated. Simultaneous use of variability and polarization trends could guide the selection of blazars for high-energy polarimetric observations.

Simulation Studies for Faraday Rotation Measure Observations

Limited by the spatial resolution of a radio telescope, multiple sources may be overlapped in the observing direction of the telescope. The Faraday rotation measure (RM) and polarization angle (PA) measurements of a target radio source will be affected by the other background radio sources located in the directional beam. The simulation study indicates that the influence of background radio sources on the polarization measurement of the target source depends on the RM values of interference sources. The RM value obtained by fitting the data of polarization observations at 2 or 3 wavelengths is not reliable. To obtain the accurate RM value of the target source needs to make fitting on the Stokes parameters Q and U observed at multiple wavebands.

Binary mixtures of liquid crystalline compounds with a reentrant smectic-A*phase

Binary mixtures of chiral liquid crystalline homologs have been studied. One compound designated 9ZBL exhibited reentrancy of a paraelectric smectic-A* phase, SmA*(RE), below the ferroelectric SmC* phase in the SmA*-SmC*-SmA*RE phase sequence. Stabilization of the SmA(RE) phase is established from studying binary mixtures of 9ZBL with its neighboring homologs 8ZBL and 10ZBL. Compound 8ZBL exhibits only SmA* phase in a wide temperature range and for 10ZBL the SmA*-SmC* phase sequence is observed on cooling. X-ray studies, dielectric spectroscopy, polarization, and tilt angle measurements have been carried out to characterize studied materials. For binary mixtures 9ZBL-10ZBL the reentrant SmA_(RE*) phase is observed for all studied concentrations. For binary mixtures 9ZBL-8ZBL a very small amount of 8ZBL (up to 0.5 mole %) causes disappearance of the SmC* phase. Nevertheless, a small anomaly in the temperature dependencies of the layer spacing, d(T), accompanied by a significant decrease in diffracted x-ray intensity occurs within the SmA* phase for mixtures containing up to 20 mole % of 8ZBL. This anomaly is evidence of the existence of a boundary between the SmA* and SmA(RE*) phases, thus proving their different nature.

Prospect of polarization measurements from black hole binaries in their thermal state with a scattering polarimeter

X-ray polarization measurement is a unique tool which may provide crucial information regarding the emission mechanism and the geometry of various astrophysical sources, such as neutron stars, accreting black holes, pulsar wind nebulae, active galactic nuclei, supernova remnants etc., and can help us to probe matter under extreme magnetic fields and extreme gravitational fields. Although the three other domains of X-ray astronomy, i.e. timing, spectral and imaging are well developed, there has been very little progress in X-ray polarimetry with only one definitive polarization measurement and a few upper limits available so far. Radiation from accreting black holes in their thermal-dominated (high soft) state is expected to be polarized due to scattering in the plane-parallel atmosphere of the disc. Furthermore, special and general relativistic effects in the innermost parts of the disc predict energy-dependent rotation in the plane of polarization and some distinct signatures which can be used as a probe for measuring the parameters of the black hole, like its spin, emissivity profile and the angle of inclination of the system. We present the results from an analysis of expected minimum detectable polarization from some of the galactic black hole binaries, GRO J1655−40, GX 339−4, H1743−322, Cygnus X-1 and XTE J1817−330, in their thermal-dominated state with a proposed Thomson X-ray polarimeter. A proposal for a scattering polarimeter has been submitted to the Indian Space Research Organization for a dedicated small satellite mission and a laboratory unit has been built. Along with the measurement of the degree of polarization, the polarization angle measurement is also important, hence the error in the polarization angle measurement for a range of detection significance is also obtained.

Magnetohydrodynamic interference with the edge pedestal motional Stark effect diagnostic on DIII-D

Accurate measurement of internal magnetic field direction using motional Stark effect (MSE) polarimetry in the edge pedestal is desired for nearly all tokamak scenario work. A newly installed 500 kHz 32-channel digitizer on the MSE diagnostic of DIII-D allows full spectral information of the polarimeter signal to be recovered for the first time. Fourier analysis of this data has revealed magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) fluctuations in the plasma edge pedestal at ρ ≥ 0.92. By correlating edge localized mode fluctuations seen on lock-in amplifier outputs with MSE spectrograms, it has been shown that edge pedestal tearing mode fluctuations cause interference with MSE second harmonic instrument frequencies. This interference results in unrecoverable errors in the real-time polarization angle measurement that are more than an order of magnitude larger than typical polarimeter uncertainties. These errors can cause as much as a 38% difference in local q. By using a redundant measure of the linear polarization found at the fourth harmonic photo-elastic modulator (PEM) frequency, MHD interference can be avoided. However, because of poorer signal-to-noise the fourth harmonic signal computed polarization angle shows no improvement over the MHD polluted second harmonics. MHD interference could be avoided in future edge pedestal tokamak polarimeters by utilizing PEMs with higher fundamental frequencies and a greater separation between their frequencies.

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory/Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph Polarimetric Calibration

We present a polarimetric characterization and correction for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory/Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (SOHO/LASCO) C2 and C3 white light coronagraphs. By measuring the uncorrected polarization angles in solar minimum C2 coronal images, we have determined that the coronagraph acts as an optical phase retarder which converts a small fraction of the incoming radiation polarization from linear to circular. In addition, from the measurements of polarization angle in C3 coronal images we have determined that a component of the instrumentally scattered light in that instrument is polarized. We infer the retardation angle for C2 and compute the corresponding Mueller matrix, and determine the polarized stray light spatial profile in C3. The C2 Mueller matrix and C3 polarized stray light profiles are used to correct for instrumental effects in solar minimum coronal observations to obtain polarized brightness between two and thirty-two solar radii, which show deep polar coronal holes extending to the limit of the field of view.