Design of a Transverse Field Magneto-Optical Filter
Authors:
Rossen Chemelekov, Kelvin KonevskyMentor:
Neil Murphy, Principal Investigator, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of TechnologyThe Sun is an active star, producing solar flares, highly energetic outbursts from the Sun, which are usually associated with Sunspots and magnetic activity. Flares can release up to 6x1025 Joules of energy and are associated with coronal mass ejections (CME’s), enhanced X-ray, UV, and energetic particle radiation. These effects can impact the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere producing severe radiation hazards to astronauts, satellites, and potentially disrupt entire power grids. One of the methods we use to study the Sun is helioseismology. Helioseismology uses images of Doppler shifts in the Sun’s spectrum to study its internal structure, similar to using waves from earthquakes to study the internal structure of Earth. The instrument that we use for these observations is a Compact Doppler Magnetograph (CDM), a remote solar sensing instrument, that observes line-of-sight velocity and magnetic fields within the Sun’s photosphere. Among the main research goals is to modify the CDM to improve its sensitivity by redesigning one of the main components of the CDM, then building and testing the improved design. We will discuss the modified CDM design, the test equipment used and a comparison between the sensitivity of our new design with the previous CDM.