Fabrication of large UV transmission blazed gratings for slitless spectral sky survey

Slitless spectral sky survey is a critical direction of international astronomical research. Compared with ground-based sky survey, space-based sky survey can achieve full-band observation, and its imaging quality and resolution capability are restricted by the efficiency and size of dispersive elements. Transmission blazed gratings are often used as the dispersive elements in the UV band. Holographic interference lithography produces the photoresist mask of a grating, and the ion beam etching vertically transfers the pattern to the substrate to form the SiO2 mask of a grating. To reduce the effect of ion beam divergence on the uniformity of the groove shape, the grating mask is etched tilted by the ion beam passing through a narrow slit to obtain a blazed grating with consistent structural parameters. Moreover, two-dimensional scanning of the sample stage enables the etching of large-size samples. A UV transmission blazed grating with a linear density of 333 lines mm−1, a blazing angle of 11.8°, and a dimension of 99.2mm × 60.0mm × 6.0mm was successfully fabricated with an average diffraction efficiency of 66%, a PV diffraction wavefront of 0.169λ (λ = 632.8 nm) and low stray light.

ERROR ANALYSIS OF THE DISPERSION-COMPENSATED WIDE-BAND POLARIZATION SAGNAC INTERFEROMETER

Imaging polarimetry can obtain two-dimensional intensity distribution information and its corresponding states of polarization from the target simultaneously. Sagnac polarization imaging interferometer is one of the typical channeled polarimetry technologies. By splitting the incident light through the triangular optical structure, the polarization information of the target is modulated into the interference fringes and can be obtained by the demodulation algorithm. The non-ideal optical elements in the system will cause reconstruction errors. This article analyses several factors that affect the measurement accuracy, including the splitting ratio of polarization beam splitter and the diffraction efficiency of the blazed grating. We derive the modified intensity formula and obtain interference patterns through numerical simulations. By calculating the modulation degree of interference fringes and reconstruction error under different non-ideal parameters, we have come to the conclusion that to meet the requirement of modulation degree > 0.5 and reconstruction error < 10%, the beam splitting ratio of the PBS should be α < 1.22. The diffraction efficiency ratio of s-polarization to p-polarization of the blazed grating should be ηs/ηp > 0.83, and the first-order diffraction efficiency should be η1 > 79%.