Related papers: NPF: mirror development in Chile
We report the first high-precision interferometer using large sapphire mirrors, and we present the first direct, broadband measurements of the fundamental thermal noise in these mirrors. Our results agree well with the thermoelastic-damping…
Shape estimation for transparent objects is challenging due to their complex light transport. To circumvent these difficulties, we leverage the Shape from Polarization (SfP) technique in the Long-Wave Infrared (LWIR) spectrum, where most…
The ability to engineer localized surface plasmon resonances at large scale usually relies on precise nanoscale patterning. Here, we demonstrate that mid-infrared plasmonic responses can instead emerge in unpatterned polysilicon films…
The Planck High Frequency Instrument (HFI) is designed to measure the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background and galactic foregrounds in six wide bands centered at 100, 143, 217, 353, 545 and 857 GHz at…
The SPIFFI integral field spectrometer is operated as a subunit of the AO instrument SINFONI on the VLT. It will be upgraded and reused as SPIFFIER in the new VLT instrument ERIS. In January 2016 an early upgrade of several optical…
By patterning a freestanding dielectric membrane into a photonic crystal reflector (PCR), it is possible to resonantly enhance its normal-incidence reflectivity, thereby realizing a thin, single-material mirror. In many PCR applications,…
This work presents the design and fabrication of simple, polymeric, structure-based optical filters that simultaneously focus light. These filters represent a novel design at the boundary between diffractive optics and metasurfaces that may…
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a set of cosmic microwave background instruments that will be deployed in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The key science goals include setting new constraints on cosmic inflation, measuring large scale structure…
We have built and tested a compact, low-cost, but very-high-performance astronomical polarimeter based on a continuously rotating half-wave plate and a high-speed imaging detector. The polarimeter is suitable for small telescopes up to ~1 m…
Aims: To propose a method for the polarimetric calibration of large astronomical mirrors that does not require use of special optical devices nor knowledge of the exact polarization properties of the calibration target. Methods: We study…
We discuss the ongoing development of single-mode fiber Fabry-Perot (FFP) Interferometers as precise astro-photonic calibration sources for high precision radial velocity (RV) spectrographs. FFPs are simple, inexpensive, monolithic units…
Cherenkov Telescopes are equipped with optical dishes of large diameter -- in general based on segmented mirrors -- with typical angular resolution of a few arc-minutes. To evaluate the mirror's quality specific metrological systems are…
HIRMES is a far-infrared spectrometer that was chosen as the third generation instrument for NASA's SOFIA airborne observatory. HIRMES promises background limited performance in four modes that cover the wavelength range between 25 and 122…
The development of synchrotron radiation light sources has been going on for decades. Recently, X-ray free-electron lasers as well as the fourth-generation synchrotron radiation sources based on multiple bend achromat lattices are…
Optical fibers have altered astronomical instrument design by allowing for a complex, often large instrument to be mounted in a remote and stable location with respect to the telescope. The fibers also enable the possibility to rearrange…
We describe a system being developed for measuring the shapes of the mirrors of the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST), now under construction for the CCAT Observatory. "Holographic" antenna-measuring techniques are an efficient and…
Multimode fibers (MMFs) can transmit multiple guided modes simultaneously, making them a promising platform for high-resolution biomedical imaging, endoscopy and high-bandwidth optical communication. However, their complex modal behavior,…
The ingot WFS is a new kind of wavefront sensor specifically designed to deal with the elongation of LGS reference sources on ELT-class telescopes. Like the pyramid, it belongs to the family of pupil plane wavefront sensors and can be…
The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is an optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph with 2394 science fibers, which are distributed in 1.3 degree diameter field of view at Subaru 8.2-meter telescope. The simultaneous wide wavelength…
Miniature concave hollows, made by wet etching silicon through a circular mask, can be used as mirror substrates for building optical micro-cavities on a chip. In this paper we investigate how ICP polishing improves both shape and roughness…