Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 135, 579-584

Optimised polarimeter configurations for measuring the Stokes parameters of the cosmic microwave background radiation

F. Couchot¹ - J. Delabrouille² - J. Kaplan³ - B. Revenu³

Send offprint request: J. Kaplan (kaplan@cdf.in2p3.fr)

1 - Laboratoire de l'Accélérateur Linéaire, IN2P3 CNRS, Université Paris Sud, 91405 Orsay, France
2 - Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, CNRS & Université Paris XI, Bât. 121, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France, and
University of Chicago, Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, U.S.A.
3 - Physique Corpusculaire et Cosmologie, Collège de France, 11 place Marcelin Berthelot, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France

Received July 10; accepted October 27, 1998

Abstract:

We present configurations of polarimeters which measure the three Stokes parameters I, Q and U of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation with a nearly diagonal error matrix, independent of the global orientation of the polarimeters in the focal plane. These configurations also provide the smallest possible error box volume.

Key words: cosmic microwave background -- cosmology: observations -- instrumentation: polarimeters -- methods: observational -- polarisation