Related papers: Development of a Miniaturized Deformable Mirror Co…
Ground-based telescopes coupled with adaptive optics (AO) have been playing a leading role in exoplanet direct imaging science and technological development for the past two decades and will continue to have an indispensable role for the…
High-speed optical wireless communication can address the exponential growth in data traffic. Adaptive beamforming customized for the target location is crucial, but existing solutions such as liquidcrystal spatial light modulators and…
The controlled modulation of an optical wavefront is required for aberration correction, digital phase conjugation or patterned photostimulation. For most of these applications it is desirable to control the wavefront modulation at the…
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…
As we enter the era of TESS and JWST, instrumentation that can carry out radial velocity measurements of exoplanet systems is in high demand. We will address this demand by upgrading the UC Lick Observatory's 2.4-meter Automated Planet…
The escalating demand for ultraviolet (UV) sensing in space exploration, environmental monitoring, and agricultural productivity necessitates detectors that are both environmentally and mechanically resilient. Diamond, featuring its high…
Direct imaging of exoplanets represents a challenge for astronomical instrumentation due to the high-contrast ratio and small angular separation between the host star and the faint planet. Multi-star systems pose additional challenges for…
LINC-NIRVANA will realize the interferometric imaging focal station of the Large Binocular Telescope. A double Layer Oriented multi-conjugate adaptive optics system assists the two arms of the interferometer, supplying high order wave-front…
Light projection displays play an increasingly important role in our modern life. Core projection systems including liquid crystal displays and digital micromirror devices can impose spatial light modulation and actively shape light waves.…
Direct imaging of exoplanets requires very high contrast levels, which are obtained using coronagraphs. But residual quasi-static aberrations create speckles in the focal plane downstream of the coronagraph which mask the planet. This…
Adaptive optics systems require a calibration procedure to operate, whether in closed loop or even more importantly in forward control. This calibration usually takes the form of an interaction matrix and is a measure of the response on the…
We demonstrated a CMOS imaging system that adapts each pixel's exposure and sampling rate to capture high dynamic range (HDR) videos. The system consist of a custom designed image sensor with pixel-wise exposure configurability and a…
The direct detection and imaging of exoplanets requires the use of high-contrast adaptive optics (AO). In these systems quasi-static aberrations need to be highly corrected and calibrated. In order to achieve this, the pupil-modulated…
We investigate the stability of a segmented deformable mirror (DM) on high-contrast testbeds and its impact on the images produced with coronagraphs. Segmented apertures are promising to obtain large primary mirrors for future missions with…
The mission EXCEDE (EXoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer), selected by NASA for technology development, is designed to study the formation, evolution and architectures of exoplanetary systems and characterize…
We present a novel platform of optical tweezers which combines rapid prototyping of user-definable microlens arrays with spatial light modulation (SLM) for dynamical control of each associated tweezer spot. Applying femtosecond direct laser…
Miniature varifocal lenses are crucial for many applications requiring compact optical systems. Here, utilizing electro-mechanically actuated 0.5-mm aperture infrared Alvarez meta-optics, we demonstrate 3.1 mm (200 diopters) focal length…
Optical metasurfaces have shown to be a powerful approach to planar optical elements, enabling an unprecedented control over light phase and amplitude. At that stage, where wide variety of static functionalities have been accomplished, most…
In the last decade, imaging polarimeters based on micropolarizer arrays have been developed for use in terrestrial remote sensing and metrology applications. Micropolarizer-based sensors are dramatically smaller and more mechanically robust…
We consider the mathematical background of the wavefront sensor type that is widely used in Adaptive Optics systems for astronomy, microscopy, and ophthalmology. The theoretical analysis of the pyramid sensor forward operators presented in…