Mitigation of the spectral dependent polarization angle response for achromatic half-wave plate

2014/04/23 by Matsumura, Tomotake
#Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1404.5795

Abstract

Polarimetry using a half-wave plate (HWP) modulator provides the strong tools to avoid a detector 1/f noise and instrument-originated spurious polarization systematic effects. While the Pancharatnam achromatic HWP (AHWP) is commonly used for an application that needs a broadband frequency coverage, this technique introduces a frequency-dependent polarization angle rotation. In this paper we propose a new technique to mitigate this effect by introducing a second set of an AHWP. One rotational and one stationary set of AHWPs achieve a broadband coverage of modulation efficiency without the frequency-dependent polarization angle rotation. We conducted measurements by using three layers of sapphire wave plates and demonstrated this technique at millimeter wavelengths between 72 and 162 GHz. We also discuss a potential application in the CMB polarization experiment based on numerical simulations.

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