Intensity-coupled polarization in instruments with a continuously rotating half-wave plate

Didier, Joy, Miller, Amber D., Araujo, Derek, Aubin, François, Geach, Christopher, Johnson, Bradley, Korotkov, Andrei, Raach, Kate, Westbrook, Benjamin, Young, Karl, Aboobaker, Asad M., Ade, Peter ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5127-0401, Baccigalupi, Carlo, Bao, Chaoyun, Chapman, Daniel, Dobbs, Matt, Grainger, Will, Hanany, Shaul, Helson, Kyle, Hillbrand, Seth, Hubmayr, Johannes, Jaffe, Andrew, Jones, Terry J., Klein, Jeff, Lee, Adrian, Limon, Michele, MacDermid, Kevin, Milligan, Michael, Pascale, Enzo, Reichborn-Kjennerud, Britt, Sagiv, Ilan, Tucker, Carole ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1851-3918, Tucker, Gregory S. and Zilic, Kyle 2019. Intensity-coupled polarization in instruments with a continuously rotating half-wave plate. Astrophysical Journal 876 (1) , 54. 10.3847/1538-4357/ab0f36

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Abstract

We discuss a systematic effect associated with measuring polarization with a continuously rotating half-wave plate (HWP). The effect was identified with the data from the E and B Experiment, which was a balloon-borne instrument designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as well as that from Galactic dust. The data show polarization fractions larger than 10%, while less than 3% were expected from instrumental polarization. We give evidence that the excess polarization is due to detector nonlinearity in the presence of a continuously rotating HWP. The nonlinearity couples intensity signals to polarization. We develop a map-based method to remove the excess polarization. Applying this method to the 150 (250) GHz band data, we find that 81% (92%) of the excess polarization was removed. Characterization and mitigation of this effect are important for future experiments aiming to measure the CMB B-modes with a continuously rotating HWP

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	American Astronomical Society
ISSN:	1538-4357
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 June 2019
Date of Acceptance:	11 March 2019
Last Modified:	25 Oct 2025 00:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/123155

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