Spectral and polarization sensitivity measurements were made at several levels (retina, first and third optic ganglion, cervical connective, behavior) of the dipteran visual nervous system. At all levels, it was possible to reveal contributions from the retinular cell subsystem cells 1 to 6 or the retinular cell subsystem cells 7 and 8 or both. Only retinular cells I to 6 were directly studied,...

The QUaD project will measure the cosmic microwave background’s polarization anisotropy from the South Pole beginning in early 2005. This thesis discusses the optical characterization of a single pixel in both the 100 GHz and 150 GHz spectral bands using the QUaD test bed. It describes the methods and results for measuring the pixel’s spectral response, polarization response, spatial response, ...

Linear (spectro) polarimetry is usually performed using separate photon flux measurements after spatial or temporal polarization modulation. Such classical polarimeters are limited in sensitivity and accuracy by systematic effects and noise. We describe a spectral modulation principle that is based on encoding the full linear polarization properties of light in its spectrum. Such spectral modul...

The room-temperature ionic liquid EmimNTf2 (1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide) was studied with two-dimensional infrared (2D IR) spectroscopy and polarization selective pump-probe (PSPP) experiments using low-concentration selenocyanate (SeCN(-)) as the vibrational probe. SeCN(-) was added as EmimSeCN, which keeps the cation the same. KSeCN was also used, so K(+) was...

We examine how spectral entanglement in polarization-entangled photon states generated from bulk-crystal, spontaneous parametric down-conversion affects the success of entanglement swapping and type-I fusion gates. We quantify the success of the entanglement swapping and fusion gates by calculating the bipartite concurrence and residual tangle, respectively, in terms of the joint spectral proba...

The degree of polarization in L dwarfs of spectral types L0–L6 resulting from dust scattering in a rotationinduced oblate photosphere is calculated. Assuming that forsterite is the main condensate, we derive the atmospheric dust distribution for different spectral types based on a chemical equilibrium model. The degree of polarization at optical is then calculated using a single-scattering mode...

Plasmonic metasurfaces enable simultaneous control of the phase, momentum, amplitude and polarization of light and hence promise great utility in realization of compact photonic devices. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel chip-scale device suitable for simultaneous polarization and spectral measurements through use of six integrated plasmonic metasurfaces (IPMs), which diffract light with a ...

This paper reviews some of the developments that over the last 10 years have allowed us to go from deciphering the physical origin of several of the enigmatic features of the second solar spectrum to discovering unknown aspects of the Sun’s hidden magnetism via sophisticated radiative transfer modeling. The second solar spectrum is the observational signature of radiatively induced quantum cohe...