Introduction

X-ray astronomy has been much advanced by three observations: spectroscopy, timing, and imaging. Also in the hard X-ray region, these three observations will be realized by ASTRO-H and XEUS. However, the observation of the polarization is at the moment left out in spite of its potential usefulness. This is because of the difficulty of developing polarimeters with high sensitivity. Since the origin of the polarization is often due to nonthermal radiation processes such as synchrotron radiation, observations in the hard X-ray region are possibly more important than those in the soft X-ray region: it is expected that the degree of polarization in the hard X-ray region would be higher than that at lower energies.