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Large ground-based telescopes equipped with adaptive optics (AO) systems have ushered in a new era of high-resolution infrared photometry and astrometry. Relative astrometric accuracies of <0.2 mas have already been demonstrated from…
The recent advent of laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO) on the largest ground-based telescopes has enabled a wide range of high angular resolution science, previously infeasible from ground-based and/or space-based observatories. As…
We present performance simulations for a proposed visible-light, multi-conjugate adaptive optics system for the 10-meter W. M. Keck I telescope that aims to deliver near diffraction-limited angular resolution at optical wavelengths. Our…
The availability and performance of laser-based adaptive optics (AO) systems are strongly dependent on the power and quality of the laser beam before being projected to the sky. Frequent and time-consuming alignment procedures are usually…
Knowledge of spatio-temporal couplings such as pulse-front tilt or curvature is important to determine the focused intensity of high-power lasers. Common techniques to diagnose these couplings are either qualitative or require hundreds of…
Cavity-free efficient coupling between emitters and guided modes is of great current interest for nonlinear quantum optics as well as efficient and scalable quantum information processing. In this work, we extend these activities to the…
Adaptive Optics (AO) is a new and rapidly expanding field of instrumentation, yet astronomers, vision scientists, and general AO practitioners are largely unfamiliar with the root technologies crucial to AO systems. The AO Summer School…
Future large space telescopes will be equipped with adaptive optics (AO) to overcome wavefront aberrations and achieve high contrast for imaging faint astronomical objects, such as earth-like exoplanets and debris disks. In contrast to AO…
It is widely believed that adaptive optics only has a role in correcting turbulent wavefronts on large telescopes using very bright reference stars. Unfortunately these are very scarce and many astronomical targets require wavefront…
Laser Guide Stars (LGS) have greatly increased the sky-coverage of Adaptive Optics (AO) systems. Due to the up-link turbulence experienced by LGSs, a Natural Guide Star (NGS) is still required, preventing full sky-coverage. We present a…
Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors for both solar and laser guide star adaptive optics (with elongated spots) need to observe extended objects. Correlation techniques have been successfully employed to measure the wavefront gradient in solar…
Photonic technologies offer numerous advantages for astronomical instruments such as spectrographs and interferometers owing to their small footprints and diverse range of functionalities. Operating at the diffraction-limit, it is…
Direct imaging of exoplanets allows us to measure positions and chemical signatures of exoplanets. Given the limited resources for space observations where the atmosphere is absent, we want to make these measurements from the ground.…
The rapid expansion of advanced low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites in large constellations is positioning space assets as key to the future, enabling global internet access and relay systems for deep space missions. A solution to the…
The adaptive module of the 4.1-m SOAR telescope, SAM, corrects ground-layer turbulence using a UV laser guide star. It has been commissioned in 2013 and it is in regular science operation since 2014. SAM works with the CCD imager covering a…
The Giant Magellan Telescope will use laser tomography adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric turbulence using artificial guide stars created in the sodium layer of the atmosphere (altitude ~95km). The sodium layer has appreciable…
We have undertaken an adaptive optics (AO) imaging survey of extrasolar planetary systems and stars showing interesting radial velocity trends from high precision radial velocity searches. AO increases the resolution and dynamic range of an…
A prototype of a low cost Adaptive Optics (AO) system has been developed at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC) and tested at the 2.2m telescope of the Calar Alto observatory. We present here the status of the project, which…
Bright single and binary stars were observed at the 4.1-m telescope with a fast electron-multiplication camera in the regime of partial turbulence correction by the visible-light adaptive optics system. We compare the angular resolution…
Using a laser-based ranging method for precise environmental 3D sensing, LiDAR has numerous applications in science and industry. However, conventional LiDAR face challenges in simultaneously achieving high ranging precision and fast…