Shrestha, M, Steele, IA, Piascik, AS, Jermak, HE, Smith, RJ and Copperwheat, CM (2020) Characterization of a dual-beam, dual-camera optical imaging polarimeter. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 494 (4). pp. 4676-4686. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

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 testing of a novel dual-beam, dual-camera optical imaging polarimeter (MOPTOP) exploiting high sensitivity, low-noise CMOS technology and designed to monitor variable and transient sources with low systematic errors and high sensitivity. We present a data reduction algorithm that corrects for sensitivity variations between the cameras on a source-by-source basis. Using our data reduction algorithm, we show that our dual-beam, dual-camera technique delivers the benefits of low and stable instrumental polarization ($<0.05$\% for lab data and $<0.25$\% for on sky data) and high throughput while avoiding the additional sky brightness and image overlap problems associated with dual-beam, single-camera polarimeters.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2020 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	astro-ph.IM; astro-ph.IM
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Related URLs:	http://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07595v1
Date Deposited:	27 Apr 2020 09:52
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 07:23
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/staa1049
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12835

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