Precision polarimetry with real-time mitigation of optical-window birefringence

Optical-window birefringence is frequently a major obstacle in experiments measuring changes in the polarization state of light traversing a sample under investigation. It can contribute a signal indistinguishable from that due to the sample and complicate the analysis. Here, we explore a method to measure and compensate for the birefringence of an optical window using the reflection from the last optical surface before the sample. We demonstrate that this arrangement can cancel out false signals due to the optical-window birefringence-induced ellipticity drift to about 1%, for the values of total ellipticity less than 0.25 rad

Scratching the Bose surface

This is a `News and Views' article discussing recent proposals for ground states of many boson systems which are neither superfluids nor Mott insulators.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

A technique for constructing spectral reflectance curves from Viking lander camera multispectral data

A technique for evaluating the construction of spectral reflectance curves from multispectral data obtained with the Viking lander cameras is presented. The multispectral data is limited to 6 channels in the wave-length range 0.4 to 1.1 microns, and several of the channels suffer from appreciable out-of-band response. The technique represents the estimated reflectance curves as a linear combination of known basic functions with coefficients determined to minimize the error in the representation, and it permits all channels, with and without out-of-band response, to contribute equally valid information. The technique is evaluated for known spectral reflectance curves of 8 materials felt likely to be present on the Martian surface. The technique provides an essentially exact fit if the the reflectance curve has no pronounced maxima and minima. Even if the curve has pronounced maxima and minima, the fit is good and reveals the most dominant features. Since only 6 samples are available some short period features are lost. This loss is almost certainly due to undersampling rather than out-of-band channel response