Astrobiological polarimeter

Abstract

Chirality is an excellent indicator of life, but naturally occurring terrestrial and extra-terrestrial samples nearly always exhibit massive depolarizing light scattering (DLS). This problem bears a striking resemblance to that of developing a chirality-based non-invasive glucose monitor for diabetics. Both applications require a lightweight, compact, efficient, and robust polarimeter that can operate despite significant DLS. So for astrobiological applications, we developed a polarimeter that was inspired from a polarimetry technique previously investigated for non-invasive in-vivo glucose-sensing. Our polarimeter involves continuously rotating the plane of linear polarization of a laser beam to probe a sample with DLS, and analyzing its transmission with a fixed analyzer to obtain a sinusoidal voltage signal. We lock-in detect this signal using a reference signal from an analogous set up without any sample. With milk as a scatterer, we find that this polarimeter detects chirality in the presence of three orders of magnitude more DLS than conventional polarimeters. It can accurately measure 0.1° of polarization rotation in the presence of 15% milk.