Liquid crystal optical retarders for IMaX to fly with SUNRISE

Lieselotte Jochum; Pilar Herrero; Manuel Collados; Valentin Martinez Pillet; Javier Rodriguez; Manuel Lopez

doi:10.1117/12.459336

14 February 2003 Liquid crystal optical retarders for IMaX to fly with SUNRISE

Lieselotte Jochum, Pilar Herrero, Manuel Collados, Valentin Martinez Pillet, Javier Rodriguez, Manuel Lopez

Proceedings Volume 4843, Polarimetry in Astronomy; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.459336
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 2002, Waikoloa, Hawai'i, United States

Abstract

The Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), Spain, together with the Spanish company Tecdis Displays Iberica, S.A., are developing voltage tunable optical retarders using liquid crystals as phase retarding medium. The ROCLIs are built for being used in the Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX), which is one of the instruments aboard of the SUNRISE balloon mission (details about IMaX are described in a different paper in this session). A big advantage of using voltage tuned retarder plates is that no mechanisms are needed, which reduces significantly failure risk, weight, power and cost, aspects of particular importance in the SUNRISE balloon mission and for many future space borne applications. A set of prototypes has already been fabricated by Tecdis S.A. and is being characterized in the IAC laboratories. The purpose of these prototypes is to evaluate and demonstrate conceptually the suitability of the chosen liquid crystal for our use in IMaX. First results are very promising. In this paper we will present a full technical description of the ROCLIs for IMaX together with the laboratory test and verification results.

Citation Download Citation

Lieselotte Jochum, Pilar Herrero, Manuel Collados, Valentin Martinez Pillet, Javier Rodriguez, and Manuel Lopez "Liquid crystal optical retarders for IMaX to fly with SUNRISE", Proc. SPIE 4843, Polarimetry in Astronomy, (14 February 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.459336

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