Polarimetric imaging of large fields in radio astronomy

¹ Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, P.O. Box 76, Epping, N.S.W. 1710, Australia
² Radio Astronomy Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley, 601 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.
³ Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany

Send offprint request to: R.J. Sault

Received: 26 April 1999
Accepted: 28 June 1999

Abstract

We introduce and compare schemes to form wide-field polarimetric images from radio-interferometric mosaic and single-dish observations. We concentrate on two schemes based on maximum entropy principles. One scheme deconvolves the four Stokes parameters jointly (simultaneously), the other deconvolves each Stokes parameter separately. We find that the two schemes do not produce substantially different results. Issues of wide-field polarimetric purity are also considered.