Paper
20 July 2010 HAWCPol: a first-generation far-infrared polarimeter for SOFIA
C. Darren Dowell, Brant T. Cook, D. Al Harper, Lung-Sheng Lin, Leslie W. Looney, Giles Novak, Ian Stephens, Marc Berthoud, David T. Chuss, Richard M. Crutcher, Jessie L. Dotson, Roger H. Hildebrand, Martin Houde, Terry J. Jones, Megan Krejny, Alexandre Lazarian, S. Harvey Moseley, Kostas Tassis, John E. Vaillancourt, Michael W. Werner
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
We describe our ongoing project to build a far-infrared polarimeter for the HAWC instrument on SOFIA. Far-IR polarimetry reveals unique information about magnetic fields in dusty molecular clouds and is an important tool for understanding star formation and cloud evolution. SOFIA provides flexible access to the infrared as well as good sensitivity to and angular resolution of continuum emission from molecular clouds. We are making progress toward outfitting HAWC, a first-generation SOFIA camera, with a four-band polarimeter covering 50 to 220 microns wavelength. We have chosen a conservative design which uses quartz half-wave plates continuously rotating at ~0.5 Hz, ball bearing suspensions, fixed wire-grid polarizers, and cryogenic motors. Design challenges are to fit the polarimeter into a volume that did not originally envision one, to minimize the heating of the cryogenic optics, and to produce negligible interference in the detector system. Here we describe the performance of the polarimeter measured at cryogenic temperature as well as the basic method we intend for data analysis. We are on track for delivering this instrument early in the operating lifetime of SOFIA.
© (2010) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
C. Darren Dowell, Brant T. Cook, D. Al Harper, Lung-Sheng Lin, Leslie W. Looney, Giles Novak, Ian Stephens, Marc Berthoud, David T. Chuss, Richard M. Crutcher, Jessie L. Dotson, Roger H. Hildebrand, Martin Houde, Terry J. Jones, Megan Krejny, Alexandre Lazarian, S. Harvey Moseley, Kostas Tassis, John E. Vaillancourt, and Michael W. Werner "HAWCPol: a first-generation far-infrared polarimeter for SOFIA", Proc. SPIE 7735, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III, 77356H (20 July 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857842
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Cited by 13 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Polarimetry

Polarization

Clouds

Magnetism

Cryogenics

Astronomy

Cameras

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