The polarization of light is the key to obtaining a wealth of essential information that lies encoded in the electromagnetic radiation from cosmic objects. Spectropolarimetry and imaging polarimetry provide powerful diagnostics of the physical conditions in astrophysical plasmas, which cannot be obtained via conventional spectroscopy. Whilst its application to other fields of astrophysics is still at an early stage of development, spectropolarimetry is being used with great success in solar physics. The book contains the lectures delivered at the XII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics. Written by eight prestigious astrophysics researchers, it covers the physics of polarization, polarized radiation diagnostics of solar magnetic fields, stellar magnetic fields, polarization insights for active galactic nuclei, compact objects and accretion disks, astronomical masers and their polarization, infrared-submillimeter spectropolarimetry, and instrumentation for astrophysical spectropolarimetry. This timely volume will provide graduate students and researchers with an unprecedented introduction to the field of Astrophysical Spectropolarimetry.

This volume documents the contributions presented at the Seventh Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Española de Astronomía, SEA). The event bought together 301 participants who presented 161 contributed talks and 120 posters, the greatest numbers up to now. The fact that most exciting items of the current astronomical research were addressed in the meeting proofs the good health of the SEA, a consolidated organization founded fifteen years ago in Barcelona. Two plenary sessions of the meeting were devoted to the approved entrance of Spain as a full member of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and to the imminent first light of the greatest telescope in the world, the GTC (Gran Telescopio de Canarias), milestones that will certainly lead the Spanish Astronomy in the next future.

It has been more than fifty years since the first significant paper on accretion flows was written. In recent years, X-ray satellites capable of identifying accretion disks and radiation jets - indications that accretion has taken place - have significantly advanced our understanding of these phenomena. This volume presents a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the major theoretical and observational topics associated with accretion processes in astrophysics. Comprising lectures presented at the twenty-first Winter School of the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, the text emphasises the physical aspects of accretion, investigating how radiation jets are produced, how accretion power is divided between jets and radiated energy, the geometry of accretion flow, and the accretion processes of active galactic nuclei. Written by an international team of experienced scientists, chapters offer young researchers key analytical tools for supporting and carrying out the next generation of front-line research.

As the need for accurate and non-invasive optical characterization and diagnostic techniques is rapidly increasing, it is imperative to find improved ways of extracting the additional information contained within the measured parameters of the scattered light. This is the first specialized monograph on photopolarimetry, a rapidly developing, multidisciplinary topic with numerous military, ecological remote-sensing, astrophysical, biomedical, and technological applications. The main objective is to describe and discuss techniques developed in various disciplines to acquire useful information from the polarization signal of scattered electromagnetic waves. It focuses on the state-of-the-art in polarimetric detection, characterization, and remote sensing, including military and environmental monitoring as well as terrestrial, atmospheric, and biomedical characterization. The book identifies polarimetric techniques that have been especially successful for various applications as well as the future needs of the various research communities. The monograph is intended to facilitate cross-pollination of ideas and thereby improve research efficiency and help advance the field of polarimetry into the future. The book is thoroughly interdisciplinary and contains only invited review chapters written by leading experts in the respective fields. It will be useful to science professionals, engineers, and graduate students working in a broad range of disciplines: optics, electromagnetics, atmospheric radiation and remote sensing, radar meteorology, oceanography, climate research, astrophysics, optical engineering and technology, particle characterization, and biomedical optics.

This book offers an essential compendium of astronomical high-resolution techniques. Recent years have seen considerable developments in such techniques, which are critical to advances in many areas of astronomy. As reflected in the book, these techniques can be divided into direct methods, interferometry, and reconstruction methods, and can be applied to a huge variety of astrophysical systems, ranging from planets, single stars and binaries to active galactic nuclei, providing angular resolution in the micro- to tens of milliarcsecond scales. Written by experts in their fields, the chapters cover adaptive optics, aperture masking imaging, spectra disentangling, interferometry, lucky imaging, Roche tomography, imaging with interferometry, interferometry of AGN, AGN reverberation mapping, Doppler- and magnetic imaging of stellar surfaces, Doppler tomography, eclipse mapping, Stokes imaging, and stellar tomography. This book is intended to enable a next generation of astronomers to apply high-resolution techniques. It informs readers on how to achieve the best angular resolution in the visible and near-infrared regimes from diffraction-limited to micro-arcsecond scales.

Written by an experienced teacher and author, this must-have source for work with polarimetric equipment and polarimetry in astronomy conveys the knowledge of the technology and techniques needed to measure and interpret polarizations. As such, this monograph offers a brief introduction and refresher, while also covering in detail statistics and data treatment as well as telescope optics. For astronomers, physicists and those working in the optical industry.

Polarized Light and Optical Systems presents polarization optics for undergraduate and graduate students in a way which makes classroom teaching relevant to current issues in optical engineering. This curriculum has been developed and refined for a decade and a half at the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences. Polarized Light and Optical Systems provides a reference for the optical engineer and optical designer in issues related to building polarimeters, designing displays, and polarization critical optical systems. The central theme of Polarized Light and Optical Systems is a unifying treatment of polarization elements as optical elements and optical elements as polarization elements. Key Features Comprehensive presentation of Jones calculus and Mueller calculus with tables and derivations of the Jones and Mueller matrices for polarization elements and polarization effects Classroom-appropriate presentations of polarization of birefringent materials, thin films, stress birefringence, crystal polarizers, liquid crystals, and gratings Discussion of the many forms of polarimeters, their trade-offs, data reduction methods, and polarization artifacts Exposition of the polarization ray tracing calculus to integrate polarization with ray tracing Explanation of the sources of polarization aberrations in optical systems and the functional forms of these polarization aberrations Problem sets to build students’ problem-solving capabilities.

This book presents gravitational lensing as an essential tool in astrophysics for tracking dark matter at all scales in the Universe.