Syllabus

Unpolarised light, Linear, Circular, Elliptical polarised light, Partially and fully polarised light, Stokes parameters, Dichroism, Birefringence, Poincare sphere – Mueller and Jones representations with applications – Complex plane of polarisation states. Generation of polarised light in astronomy – polarisation by reflection, scattering geometry, magnetic fields - dependence on refractive index – synchrotron emission – Faraday rotation – Dust in ISM. Instrumental polarisation errors and their calibration. Optical/infrared polarimetry – Polaroids, Wave plates, Wollaston prism, Modulators – photoelastic modulators, liquid crystals – compound zero order plates, achromatic retarders, fresnel rhombs, modulators with CCDs, Two beam analysers, Achromatic systems, imaging and spectropolarimetry. Radio polarimetry – Orthogonal dipoles as feeds, Native linear and circular feeds, correlation, synthesis array and VLBI. X-ray polarimetry – Bragg Polarimeters, Thompson/Compton Polarimeters, Gas Pixel Detector (GPD) solution, Time Projection Chamber (TPC) polarimeter solution, X-ray polarimetry – future missions .