Speaker
Description
The European Solar Telescope (EST) will be equipped with a comprehensive suite of state-of-the-art intruments designed to observe the solar atmosphere at high spatial and temporal resolution and with high polarimetric sensitivity. Among them are three Tunable-Imaging Spectropolarimeters and Fixed-Band Imagers (TIS/FBIs) that will provide diffraction-limited measurements of photospheric and chromospheric magnetic fields over large fields of view. Each of these instruments consists of a narrow-band imaging spectropolarimeter and a broad-band imager. The spectropolarimeter is based on a dual Fabry-Perot interferometer and a polarimeter incorporating two nematic liquid crystal variable retarders. The imager will provide context information at the fastest cadence and will allow for reconstruction of the narrow-band images. The three TIS/FBIs will be operated in parallel for high cadence monitoring of the lower solar atmosphere in three or more spectral lines simultaneously, greatly improving the capabilities of existing filtergraphs that measure individual lines sequentially. The TIS/FBIs will provide unprecedented polarimetric sensitivity due to their optimized design and the large photon collecting area of the 4.2 m primary mirror of the telescope.
In this talk we will present the science goals of the EST TIS/FBI instruments. We will also review the current status of the TIS/FBIs, focusing on the main design drivers and the technological solutions adopted in this development phase. The TIS/FBIs are expected to go through a conceptual design review by the end of 2024, together with the other instruments of the EST Instrument Suite.
