Development of a High-Speed and Full-Disk Polarimeter for Solar Synoptic Observations

California State University Northridge (CSUN), in collaboration with NSO and NJIT, seeks NSF support to develop the first sCMOS based high-speed & high-accuracy polarimeter that will be able to acquire a polarization Stokes vector measurement with a speed up to 100 Hz and an accuracy up to ?10-3. The developed instrument will be used for the observations of Solar Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) associated events of filaments and prominences at the H-alpha and D3 spectral lines. Solar CMEs are often associated with pre-existing filaments and prominences. The determination of the magnetic field in the solar chromosphere before, during and after a CME event will allow one to derive the conditions that trigger CMEs and the magnetic field properties of the ejected material. Both ingredients are crucial to improve the space weather forecast with respect to the probability of CME events and the potential impact on the Earth's magnetosphere. Our polarimetry system will consist of a 235-mm telescope, a tunable Fabry-Perot interferometer, a high-speed and high-accuracy polarimeter, a sCMOS camera and a telescope mount/tripod. It will provide a large field of view (FOV) up to 0.7?x0.14?. Due to the large FOV and the capability to run synoptic daily observations over long time, our system can be used for a continuous all-day polarization measurement, and be used to infer the magnetic field in filaments and prominences. No other current facility provides such measurements.