Dual-beam Polarimetry

This section gives a brief introduction to the general principles of dual-beam polarimetry. It explains words and concepts used later, and defines the data model used by POLPACK. A well established example of a dual-beam polarimeter is described by Scarrott et al. (Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc. (1983) 204, 1163 - 1177).

Single waveband polarimetry is described here but the principles can be extended to imaging spectropolarimetry (see here).