Biases induced by retardance and diattenuation in the measurements of long-baseline interferometers

Abstract

I derive in this paper theoretical expressions for biases on fringe contrast and fringe visibility phase for optical interferometers whose polarizing properties can be described by beam rotation, retardance, and diattenuation. The nature of these biases is discussed for natural light, circular and linear polarization, and partially polarized light. Expansions are obtained for small degrees of polarization, small differential retardance, and small diattenuation. The biases on fringe contrasts are already known. It is shown in this paper that retardance and diattenuation are also sources of bias on the visibility phases and derived quantities. In some cases, the bias is zero. If the retardance is achromatic, differential phases are not affected. Closure phases are not affected to the second order for an interferometer with weak diattenuation and weak differential retardance and for moderately polarized sources whatever the type of light. Otherwise, a calibration procedure is required. It is shown that astrometric measurements are biased in the general case. The bias depends on both the polarization properties of the interferometer and on the (u,v) sampling. In the extreme case where the samples are aligned on a line crossing the origin of the spatial frequency plane, the bias is undetermined and can be arbitrarily large. In all other cases, it can be calibrated if the polarizing characteristics of the interferometer are known. In the case of low differential retardance and low degree of polarization, the bias lies on a straight line, crossing the astrometric reference point. If the degree of linear polarization varies during the observations, then the astrometric bias has a remarkable signature, which describes a section of the line. For slightly polarizing interferometers, a fixed offset is added without changing the shape of the bias.