Abstract
A Stokes polarimeter has been built at the High Altitude Observatory to obtain line profiles in both linear and circular polarization in solar spectral lines. These measurements are interpreted using the theory of radiative transfer in the presence of a magnetic field to obtain vector magnetic fields on the solar disk and using the theory of resonance scattering and the Hanle effect to obtain vector magnetic fields in prominences. The polarimeter operates on the Sacramento Peak Observatory 40 cm coronagraph. It is an extensively modified and improved version of an earlier instrument.
Polarization modulation is achieved by two KD*P Pockels cells at the coronagraph prime focus and demodulation is by a microprocessor. The instrument control and data handling is done by a minicomputer. Silicon photodiode 128 element line array detectors have replaced the two photomultipliers used on the earlier instrument. This gives a speed increase of a factor of 50.
A polarization scrambler provides a chop to a reference beam of unpolarized light by time scrambling the polarization of the solar beam. This device improves sensitivity to polarizations less than 0.01%. The polarization measurements are photon noise limited in most cases. This noise is 0.1% for a typical three second observation which is about one gauss on the longitudinal field and 10 gauss on the transverse field.
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The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by The National Science Foundation.
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Baur, T.G., Elmore, D.E., Lee, R.H. et al. Stokes II — A new polarimeter for solar observations. Sol Phys 70, 395–410 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00151343
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00151343