Open Access
3 July 2020 First results from an uncooled LWIR polarimeter for cubesat deployment
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Abstract

A compact long-wave infrared (LWIR) channeled spectro-polarimeter (IRCSP) has been developed for integration into the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) funded submm-wave and LWIR polarimeters project to measure the microphysical properties of cloud ice. Once deployed, the IRCSP will produce the first linear Stokes measurements   (  S0  ,  S1  ,  S2  )   of upper-tropospheric cirrus clouds from 8.5  to 12.5  μm. For the first time, a compact, light-weight, and uncooled LWIR polarimeter with off-the-shelf thermal optical components is demonstrated. We report narrowband calibration measurements which quantify metrics of polarimetric system performance. The response of the system to linearly polarized light is shown to agree with both a Mueller matrix model and modulation function for narrowband calibration measurements with an R2  >  0.98 from 8 to 11  μm. The polarimetric efficiency is >0.8 from 8 to 11  μm for narrowband measurements indicating satisfactory performance of the polarization optics. Beyond 11  μm, the agreement is significantly reduced as thermal noise compounds with reduced detector response. Ultimately, the observed system performance is limited by the spectral response of the detector past 11  μm in addition to the thermal noise inherent for the measurements at room temperature.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Kira A. Hart, Meredith K. Kupinski, Dong L. Wu, and Russell A. Chipman "First results from an uncooled LWIR polarimeter for cubesat deployment," Optical Engineering 59(7), 075103 (3 July 2020). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.59.7.075103
Received: 25 November 2019; Accepted: 23 June 2020; Published: 3 July 2020
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CITATIONS
Cited by 17 scholarly publications and 1 patent.
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KEYWORDS
Polarimetry

Modulation

Cameras

Long wavelength infrared

Polarization

Calibration

Sensors

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