Related papers: Curved detectors for astronomical applications:cha…
A critical challenge problem of scene change detection is that noisy changes generated by varying illumination, shadows and camera viewpoint make variances of a scene difficult to define and measure since the noisy changes and semantic ones…
We demonstrate the potential of new adaptive optical technology to expand the detection horizon of gravitational-wave observatories. Achieving greater quantum-noise-limited sensitivity to spacetime strain hinges on achieving higher…
Cavity optomechanical (COM) sensors, enhanced by quantum squeezing or entanglement, have become powerful tools for measuring ultra-weak forces with high precision and sensitivity. However, these sensors usually rely on linear COM couplings,…
Understanding the noise characteristics of high quantum efficiency silicon-based ultraviolet detectors, developed by the Microdevices Lab at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is critical for current and proposed UV missions using these…
We present a stroboscopic system developed for optical observations of pulsars and its application in the CLYPOS survey. The stroboscopic device is connected to a GPS clock and provides absolute timing to the stroboscopic shutter relative…
This paper considers the problem of detecting a high dimensional signal (not necessarily sparse) based on compressed measurements with physical layer secrecy guarantees. First, we propose a collaborative compressive detection (CCD)…
This thesis presents three studies in quantum-enhanced sensing and target detection. The first study explores covert target detection using optical or microwave probes, establishing quantum-mechanical limits on the error probabilities of…
Detecting edges is a fundamental problem in computer vision with many applications, some involving very noisy images. While most edge detection methods are fast, they perform well only on relatively clean images. Indeed, edges in such…
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…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright stars with Ic<13. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2018 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission, and is expected to discover a thousand or…
We present a new model-independent method to determine the spatial curvature and to mitigate the circularity problem affecting the use of quasars as distance indicators. The cosmic-chronometer measurements are used to construct the…
Pixel sensors based on commercial high-voltage CMOS processes are an exciting technology that is considered as an option for the outer layer of the ATLAS inner tracker upgrade at the High Luminosity LHC. Here, charged particles are detected…
In recent years, complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) sensors have been demonstrated to have significant potential in X-ray astronomy, where long-term reliability is crucial for space X-ray telescopes. This study examines the…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements are fundamentally limited by photon statistics. Therefore, ground-based CMB observatories have been increasing the number of detectors that are simultaneously observing the sky. Thanks to the…
Recent advances in CMOS technology have potential to significantly increase the performance, at low-cost, of an astronomical space telescope. Arrays of sensors in space missions are typically contiguous and act as a monolithic detector. A…
Far-infrared detectors for future cooled space telescopes require ultra-sensitive detectors with optical noise equivalent powers of order 0.2 aW/\sqrt Hz. This performance has already been demonstrated in arrays of transition edge sensors.…
Lensed quasars and supernovae can be used to study galaxies' gravitational potential and measure cosmological parameters. The typical image separation of objects lensed by galaxies is of the order of 0.5". Therefore, finding the ones with…
To achieve the sensitivity required to detect signals from neutral hydrogen from the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionisation it is critical to have a well-calibrated instrument which has a stable calibration over the course of the…
The observation of the low-energy $\gamma$-ray (0.1-30 MeV) sky has been significantly limited since the COMPTEL instrument was decommissioned aboard the Compton Gamma-ray Observer (CGRO) satellite in 2000. The exploration of $\gamma$-ray…
Learning a latent embedding to understand the underlying nature of data distribution is often formulated in Euclidean spaces with zero curvature. However, the success of the geometry constraints, posed in the embedding space, indicates that…