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The Effects of Instrumental Elliptical Polarization on Stellar Point Spread Function Fine Structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2006

Joseph C. Carson
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA, 91101 USA California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
Brian D. Kern
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA, 91101 USA
James B. Breckinridge
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA, 91101 USA
John T. Trauger
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA, 91101 USA
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Abstract

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We present procedures and preliminary results from a study on the effects of instrumental polarization on the fine structure of the stellar point spread function (PSF). These effects are important to understand because the the aberration caused by instrumental polarization on an otherwise diffraction-limited will likely have have severe consequences for extreme high contrast imaging systems such as NASA's planned Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission and the proposed NASA Eclipse mission. The report here, describing our efforts to examine these effects, includes two parts: 1) a numerical analysis of the effect of metallic reflection, with some polarization-specific retardation, on a spherical wavefront; 2) an experimental approach for observing this effect, along with some preliminary laboratory results. While the experimental phase of this study requires more fine-tuning to produce meaningful results, the numerical analysis indicates that the inclusion of polarization-specific phase effects (retardation) results in a point spread function (PSF) aberration more severe than the amplitude (reflectivity) effects previously recorded in the literature.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
© 2006 International Astronomical Union