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Basics of spectropolarimetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

John D. Landstreet
John D. Landstreet*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario, London, Canada and Armagh Observatory, Armagh, Northern Ireland email: jlandstr@uwo.ca
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Abstract

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Many astronomical sources of radiation emit polarised radiation, for example because of the presence of a disk which produces linear polarisation by scattering some photospheric radiation, or because of the presence of a magnetic field, which leads to circular and sometimes linear polarisation of spectral line profiles. Measuring the wavelength dependence of the polarisation of radiation from such sources can reveal valuable and interesting constraints on the nature of the objects observed. This paper summarises the basic ideas of spectropolarimetry and describes some of the information it can provide.

Keywords

Polarisationinstrumentation: polarimeterstechniques: polarimetricstars: magnetic fieldsstars: circumstellar matter

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