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arXiv · 2411.18763

Polarization Calibration of the FAST L-band 19-beam Receiver: I. On-axis Mueller Matrix Parameters

Tao-Chung Ching·Carl Heiles·Di Li·Timothy Robishaw·Xunzhou Chen·Lingqi Meng·You-Ling Yue·Lei Qian·Hong-Fei Liu
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Abstract

We present the polarization calibration of the 19-beam receiver at 1420 MHz within the full illumination of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope from October 2018 to March 2023. We perform spider observations to characterize the on-axis Mueller matrix of the central beam. The calibrated polarization percentage and polarization angle of a source with strong linear polarization emission are about 0.2\% and 0.5$^{\circ}$. Several parameters of the central-beam Mueller matrix show time variability from months to years, suggesting relatively frequent polarization calibrations are needed. We obtain the Mueller matrix parameters of the 18 off-center beams with the combination of on-the-fly observations and spider observations. The polarization calibration provides consistent fractional Stokes parameters of the 19 beams, although the Mueller matrix parameters of the off-center beams are not as accurate as those of the central beam. The Mueller matrix parameters of the central beam do not show a strong dependence on the reflector surface. However, we notice different off-center Mueller matrix parameters between the eastern and western sides of the reflector surface. We provide average parameters of the 19-beam Mueller matrices which should be applicable to observations from 2020 to 2022 with several caveats. After applying the average parameters, on-axis fractional linear polarization measurements $\gtrsim$ 10\% and on-axis fractional circular polarization measurements $\gtrsim$ 1.5\% can be considered high-confidence detections. For sources with weak polarization, timely polarization calibrations using spider observations are required.

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Tao-Chung Ching, Carl Heiles, Di Li, Timothy Robishaw, Xunzhou Chen, Lingqi Meng, You-Ling Yue, Lei Qian, Hong-Fei Liu. 2024-11-27. Polarization Calibration of the FAST L-band 19-beam Receiver: I. On-axis Mueller Matrix Parameters. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.18763

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