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Optical diffraction tomography is an indispensable tool for studying objects in three-dimensions due to its ability to accurately reconstruct scattering objects. Until now this technique has been limited to coherent light because spatial…
Interferometers provide a highly sensitive means to investigate and exploit the coherence properties of light in metrology applications. However, interferometers come in various forms and exploit different properties of the optical states…
Adaptive optics enables the deployment of interferometer-based spectroscopy without the need for moving parts necessary for scanning the interferometer arms. Here, we employ a Michelson Interferometer in conjunction with a Spatial Light…
Advanced adaptive optics (AO) instruments on ground-based telescopes require accurate knowledge of the atmospheric turbulence strength as a function of altitude. This information assists point spread function reconstruction, AO temporal…
Optical interferometry provides us with a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of stellar structure and evolution. Through direct observation of rotationally distorted photospheres at sub-milliarcsecond scales, we are now able to…
The direct imaging of an Earth-like exoplanet will require sub-nanometric wavefront control across large light-collecting apertures, to reject host starlight and detect the faint planetary signal. Current adaptive optics (AO) systems, which…
Lithography is fundamental to integrated circuit fabrication, necessitating large computation overhead. The advancement of machine learning (ML)-based lithography models alleviates the trade-offs between manufacturing process expense and…
Kernel Adaptive Filtering (KAF) are mathematically principled methods which search for a function in a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space. While they work well for tasks such as time series prediction and system identification they are…
A main science goal for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is to measure the cosmic shear signal from weak lensing to extreme accuracy. One difficulty, however, is that with the short exposure time ($\simeq$15 seconds) proposed, the…
All coronagraphic instruments for exoplanet high-contrast imaging need wavefront correction systems to reject optical aberrations and create sufficiently dark holes. Since the most efficient wavefront correction algorithms (controllers and…
Diffractive/refractive optics, such as Phase Fresnel Lenses (PFL's), offer the potential to achieve excellent imaging performance in the x-ray and gamma-ray photon regimes. In principle, the angular resolution obtained with these devices…
The concept of a recently proposed small-scale interferometric optical imaging device, an instrument known as the Segmented Planar Imaging Detector for Electro-optical Reconnaissance (SPIDER), is of great interest for its possible…
Context: Exoplanet science has made staggering progress in the last two decades, due to the relentless exploration of new detection methods and refinement of existing ones. Yet astrometry offers a unique and untapped potential of discovery…
Adaptive optics systems are critical in any application where highly resolved imaging or beam control must be performed through a dynamic medium. Such applications include astronomy and free-space optical communications, where light…
In order for telescopes to obtain good and precise images they need to see through atmospheric turbulence. To accomplish this and compensate for atmospheric turbulence we use Adaptive Optics technologies. In this thesis we analyze the…
A new method for absolute polarimetric calibration of large telescopes is presented. The proposed method is highly accurate and is based on the calibration of a small sub-aperture, which is then extended to the full system by means of…
Polarimetric interferometry is a method allowing the study of the distribution of polarized flux at diffraction-limited resolution. Its basic observable is the ratio $\mathcal{R}$ of the visibilities of the object in two orthogonal…
The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wavefront chromaticity and scintillation on the point spread function (PSF) contrast achievable with ground based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wavefront sensing schemes. I show that…
Speckle interferometry is an established optical metrology tool for the characterization of rough objects. The raw phase, however, is impaired by the presence of phase singularities, making the unwrapping procedure ambiguous. In a Michelson…
We describe and report first results from PALM-3000, the second-generation astronomical adaptive optics facility for the 5.1-m Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory. PALM-3000 has been engineered for high-contrast imaging and emission…