Related papers: Manufacturing and testing a thin glass mirror shel…
Experiments in the field of optomechanics do not yet fully exploit the photon polarization degree of freedom. Here experimental results for an optomechanical interaction in a polarization nondegenerate system are presented and schemes are…
The current generation of ground-based coronagraphic instruments uses deformable mirrors to correct for phase errors and to improve contrast levels at small angular separations. Improving these techniques, several space and ground based…
We devise a laser-controlled adaptive optical element which operates intracavity under high intensity radiation. This element substitutes a conventional mechanically deformable mirror and is free of critical heat-sensitive components and…
Due to turbulence in the atmosphere images taken from ground-based telescopes become distorted. With adaptive optics (AO) images can be given greater clarity allowing for better observations with existing telescopes and are essential for…
Recent decades have seen significant advancements in integrated photonics, driven by improvements in nanofabrication technology. This field has developed from integrated semiconductor lasers and low-loss waveguides to optical modulators,…
Optical modules for X-ray telescopes comprise several double-reflection mirrors operating in grazing incidence. The concentration power of an optical module, which determines primarily the telescope's sensitivity, is in general expressed by…
The surface figure of x-ray mirrors can be improved by differential deposition of thin films. To achieve the required corrections, WSi2 layers of variable thickness were deposited through beam-defining apertures of different openings. The…
We present two concepts of deformable mirror to compensate for first order optical aberrations. Deformation systems are designed using both elasticity theory and Finite Element Analysis in order to minimize the number of actuators. Starting…
We present a fiber sensor based on an active integrated component which could be effectively used to measure the longitudinal vibration modes of telescope mirrors in an interferometric array. We demonstrate the possibility to measure…
We present a new type of tunable mirror with sharply-featured freeform displacement profiles, large displacements of several 100\mu m and high operating frequencies close to the kHz range at 15mm diameter. The actuation principle is based…
We present the design and fabrication of a miniaturized array of piezoelectrically actuated high speed Fresnel mirrors with individual mirror control. These Fresnel mirrors can be used to generate propagation invariant and self-healing…
The imaging sharpness of an X-ray telescope is chiefly determined by the optical quality of its focusing optics, which in turn mostly depends on the shape accuracy and the surface finishing of the grazing-incidence X-ray mirrors that…
The realization of X-ray telescopes with imaging capabilities in the hard (> 10 keV) X-ray band requires the adoption of optics with shallow (< 0.25 deg) grazing angles to enhance the reflectivity of reflective coatings. On the other hand,…
Multimode interference reflectors (MIRs) were recently introduced as a new type of photonic integrated devices for on-chip, broadband light reflection. In the original proposal, different MIRs were demonstrated based on total internal…
In astronomy and microscopy, distortions in the wavefront affect the dynamic range of a high contrast imaging system. These aberrations are either imposed by a turbulent medium such as the atmosphere, by static or thermal aberrations in the…
In the last few years the concept of an active space telescope has been greatly developed, to meet demanding requirements with a substantial reduction of tolerances, risks and costs. This is the frame of the LATT project (an ESA TRP) and…
We discuss a new technology that promises large inexpensive mirrors. We argue that it should be possible to tilt a rotating viscous liquid by perhaps as much as a few tens of degrees. The tilted liquid parabolic surface is used as the…
Fabricating freeform mirrors relies on accurate optical figuring processes capable of arbitrarily modifying low-spatial frequency height without creating higher-spatial frequency errors. We present a scalable process to accurately figure…
Spaced-based mirrors are a developing use-case for Additive Manufacturing (AM), the process that builds a part layer-by-layer. The increased geometric freedom results in novel and advantageous designs previously unachievable.…
The future fibre optic communications network will rely on photons as carriers of information, which may be stored in intensity, polarization or phase of light. However, processing of such optical information usually relies on electronics.…