Calendar Event Details
AEROCENTER: Brandon Zimmerman
Affiliation: University of Rochester and NASA Code 551
Event Date: Thursday, October 1, 2015
Location: tbd
Time: 11:00 AM
Unconventional Light Scattering Polarimetry for Aerosol Monitoring
We introduce a class of unconventional, spatially inhomogeneous polarized beams for their application in aerosol polarimetry. One such beam may be formed by the unique superposition of right and left circularly polarized beams by a customized Nomarski prism. Such superposition results in a beam that repeatedly traverses the equator of the Poincaré sphere in one of the beams spatial dimensions, such that, an image of light scattered from the beam yields the phase functions of the scatterers without temporal modulation of the input polarization. We call this a One Dimensional Poincaré Beam. We show that by illuminating an ensemble of Mie scatterers with our beam, that we can extract the phase functions, and size of the scatterers (amongst other physical parameters), in a manner that is both faster and more efficient than conventional methods. Furthermore, we present the design and fabrication of a single frame imaging polarimeter, based off of our own concepts of Star Test Polarimetry. Our Star Test Imaging Polarimeter possesses the capability to characterize the variation of Stokes parameters across a given object in real time with a single irradiance measurement. We conclude our results by integrating the two aforementioned systems into a single experiment; such that an ensemble of Mie scatterers illuminated by our Poincaré Beam, and imaged through our polarimeter, will yield the full phase matrix, and size parameter of the scatterers in a single image.
Posted or updated: Monday, September 21, 2015
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