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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…
With the forthcoming release of high precision polarization measurements, such as from the Planck satellite, it becomes critical to evaluate the performance of estimators for the polarization fraction and angle. These two physical…
High precision polarization measurements open new opportunities for the study of the magnetic field structure as traced by polarimetric measurements of the interstellar dust emission. Polarization parameters suffer from bias in the presence…
Context. Circumstellar disks and self-luminous giant exoplanets or companion brown dwarfs can be characterized through direct-imaging polarimetry at near-infrared wavelengths. SPHERE/IRDIS at the Very Large Telescope has the capabilities to…
We investigate the impact of instrumental systematic errors on the potential of cosmic microwave background polarization experiments targeting primordial B-modes. To do so, we introduce spin-weighted Muller matrix-valued fields describing…
Polarization plays an important role in various time-domain astrophysics to understand the magnetic fields, geometry, and environments of spatially unresolved variable sources. In this paper we present the results of laboratory and on-sky…
We designed and built a new astronomical photo-polarimeter that can measure linear polarization simultaneously in three spectral bands. It has a Calcite beamdisplacement prism as the analyzer. The ordinary and extra-ordinary emerging beams…
Direction-dependent instrumental polarisation introduces wide-field polarimetric aberrations and limits the dynamic range of low-frequency interferometric images. We therefore provide a detailed two-dimensional analysis of the Giant…
The prospects for accomplishing x-ray polarization measurements of astronomical sources have grown in recent years, after a hiatus of more than 37 years. Unfortunately, accompanying this long hiatus has been some confusion over the…
We expand on our previous study of the impact of atmospheric seeing on polarization cross-talk, and show how the formalism that was developed in that work can be applied to treat the case of spatial modulators of polarization. Beside…
Many different methods exist for reducing data obtained when an astronomical source is studied with a two-channel polarimeter, such as a Wollaston prism system. This paper presents a rigorous method of reducing the data from raw aperture…
The goal of this work is to characterize the polarization effects of the VLTI and GRAVITY. This is needed to calibrate polarimetric observations with GRAVITY for instrumental effects and to understand the systematic error introduced to the…
Taking advantage of the advances in array detector technology, an imaging polarimeter (IMPOL) has been constructed for measuring linear polarization in the wavelength band from 400-800 nm. It makes use of a Wollaston prism as the analyser…
The wave plate is a basic device for transforming and measuring the polarization states of light. It is known that the transformation of light by means of two wave plates makes it possible to measure the state of polarization in an…
Precise polarisation measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) require accurate knowledge of the instrument orientation relative to the sky frame used to define the cosmological Stokes parameters. Suitable celestial calibration…
We discuss instrumental and analytic methods that have been developed for the first generation of bolometric cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeters. The design, characterization, and analysis of data obtained using Polarization…
The ability of NICMOS to perform high accuracy polarimetry is currently hampered by an uncalibrated residual instrumental polarization at a level of 1.2-1.5%. To better quantify and characterize this residual we obtained observations of…
Next generation radio telescope arrays are being designed and commissioned to accurately measure polarized intensity and rotation measures across the entire sky through deep, wide-field radio interferometric surveys. Radio interferometer…
Many circumstellar dust scattering regions have been detected and investigated with polarimetric imaging. However, the quantitative determination of the intrinsic polarization and of dust properties is difficult because of complex…
Linear polarization measurements provide access to two quantities, the degree (DOP) and the angle of polarization (AOP). The aim of this work is to give a complete and concise overview of how to analyze polarimetric measurements. We review…