Overview of Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha SpectroPolarimeter (CLASP)

The solar chromosphere is an important boundary, through which all of the plasma, magnetic fields and energy in the corona and solar wind are supplied. Since the Zeeman splitting is typically smaller than the Doppler line broadening in the chromosphere and transition region, it is not effective to explore weak magnetic fields. However, this is not the case for the Hanle effect, when we have an instrument with high polarization sensitivity (∼ 0.1%). "Chromospheric Lyman- Alpha SpectroPolarimeter (CLASP)" is the sounding rocket experiment to detect linear polarization produced by the Hanle effect in Lyman-alpha line (121.567 nm) and to make the first direct measurement of magnetic fields in the upper chromosphere and lower transition region. To achieve the high sensitivity of ∼ 0.1% within a rocket flight (5 minutes) in Lyman-alpha line, which is easily absorbed by materials, we design the optical system mainly with reflections. The CLASP consists of a classical Cassegrain telescope, a polarimeter and a spectrometer. The polarimeter consists of a rotating 1/2-wave plate and two reflecting polarization analyzers. One of the analyzer also works as a polarization beam splitter to give us two orthogonal linear polarizations simultaneously. The CLASP is planned to be launched in 2014 summer.