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Several on-going and future experiments use a Stokes polarimeter (i.e. a rotating wave plate followed by a steady polarizer and by an unpolarized detector) to measure the small polarized component of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The…
Polarization measurements provide direct insight into the nature of astrophysical processes. Unfortunately, only a few instruments are available for this kind of measurements at gamma-ray energies, and the sources need to be very bright.…
Current {\gamma}-ray telescopes based on photon conversions to electron-positron pairs, such as Fermi, use tungsten converters. They suffer of limited angular resolution at low energies, and their sensitivity drops below 1 GeV. The low…
X-ray polarisation measurement is a unique tool which may provide crucial information regarding the emission mechanism and the geometry of various astrophysical sources, like neutron stars, accreting black holes, pulsar wind nebulae, AGNs,…
X-ray and gamma-ray polarimetry is a promising tool to study the geometry and the magnetic configuration of various celestial objects, such as binary black holes or gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). However, statistically significant polarizations…
Polarization measurements provide strong constraints on models for emission from rotation-powered pulsars. We present multiwavelength polarization predictions showing that measurements over a range of frequencies can be particularly…
The proton analyzing power in carbon has been measured for energies of 82 to 217 MeV and proton scattering angles of 5 to 41 degrees. The measurements were carried out using polarized protons from the elastic scattering H(pol. e, pol. p)…
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol) was a suborbital experiment designed to map magnetic fields in order to study their role in star formation processes. BLASTPol made detailed polarization…
PoGOLite is a balloon-borne hard X-ray polarimeter dedicated to the study of point sources. Compton scattered events are registered using an array of plastic scintillator units to determine the polarisation of incident X-rays in the energy…
RoboPol is a four-channel, one-shot linear optical polarimeter that has been successfully operating since 2013 on the 1.3 m telescope at Skinakas Observatory in Crete, Greece. Using its unique optical system, it measures the linear Stokes…
Context: Polarimetry is a very powerful tool to uncover various properties of astronomical objects that remain otherwise hidden in standard imaging or spectroscopic observations. However, the reliable measurement of the low polarization…
The Sky Polarization Observatory is an experiment selected by ESA for the Early Opportunity Phase onboard the International Space Station. SPOrt is the first payload specifically designed for polarization measurements, it will provide near…
A new astronomical photo-polarimeter that can measure linear polarization of point sources simultaneously in three spectral bands was designed and built in Indian Institute of Astrophysics. The polarimeter has a Calcite beam-displacement…
In January 2012, the 10m South Pole Telescope (SPT) was equipped with a polarization-sensitive camera, SPTpol, in order to measure the polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Measurements of the polarization of the…
We have measured the linear polarisation of hard X-ray emission from the Crab in a previously unexplored energy interval, 20-120 keV. The introduction of two new observational parameters, the polarisation fraction and angle stands to…
We report on Monte Carlo studies of the hard X-ray polarimeter X-Calibur. The polarimeter will be used in the focal plane of a grazing incidence hard X-ray telescope. It combines a low-Z Compton scatterer with a high-Z Cadmium Zinc…
In the last decade, imaging polarimeters based on micropolarizer arrays have been developed for use in terrestrial remote sensing and metrology applications. Micropolarizer-based sensors are dramatically smaller and more mechanically robust…
Polarimetric studies of astrophysical sources can make important contributions to resolve the geometry of the emitting region and determine the photon emission mechanism. PoGOLite is a balloon-borne polarimeter operating in the hard X-ray…
Many objects on the sky exhibit a centrosymmetric polarization pattern, particularly in cases involving single scattering around a central source. Utilizing a novel liquid crystal device (the ``theta cell'') that transforms the coordinate…
The Polarized Gamma-ray Observer (PoGOLite) is a balloon-borne instrument that can measure polarization in the energy range 25--240 keV. The instrument adopts an array of well-type "phoswich" detectors in order to suppress backgrounds.…