Related papers: P-REx II. Off-line Performance on VLTI/GRAVITY

Optical interferometers increasingly use single-mode fibers as spatial filters to convert varying wavefront distortion into intensity fluctuations which can be monitored for accurate calibration of fringe amplitudes. Here I propose using an…

The radial relative velocity between particles suspended in turbulent flow plays a critical role in droplet collision and growth. We present a simple and accurate approach to RV measurement in isotropic turbulence - planar 4-frame particle…

Visibility estimators and their performance are presented for use with the Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI). One operational mode of PTI is single-baseline visibility measurement using pathlength modulation with synchronous readout by a…

We propose and apply two methods to estimate pupil plane phase discontinuities for two realistic scenarios on VLT and Keck. The methods use both Phase Diversity and a form of image sharpening. For the case of VLT, we simulate the `low wind…

Measurement of interferometric parameters values is affected by phase disturbance due especially to atmospheric turbulences. Algorithms of fringe sensing, aimed at fringe parameters identification, are based on interferometric models that…

A long-held vision has been to realize diffraction-limited optical aperture synthesis over kilometer baselines. This will enable imaging of stellar surfaces and their environments, and reveal interacting gas flows in binary systems. An…

Several types of Wavefront Sensors (WFS) are nowadays available in the field of Adaptive Optics (AO). Generally speaking, their basic principle consists in measuring slopes or curvatures of Wavefront Errors (WFE) transmitted by a telescope,…

Herein is presented an optical diffraction tomography (ODT) technique for measuring 3-D refractive index (RI) maps of optical plastic lenses. A Mach-Zehnder interferometer was used to measure multiple complex optical fields of a plastic…

The strength and vertical distribution of atmospheric turbulence is a key factor determining the performance of optical and infrared telescopes, with and without adaptive optics. Yet, this remains challenging to measure. We describe a new…

In this work, the force due to radiation pressure is measured with sub-10 pN sensitivity, corresponding to less than 2 mW of optical power. The apparatus adds homemade reflectors to a commercial Cavendish balance, which consists of a…

Optical-window birefringence is frequently a major obstacle in experiments measuring changes in the polarization state of light traversing a sample under investigation. It can contribute a signal indistinguishable from that due to the…

With the Extremely Large Telescope-generation telescopes come new challenges. The complexity of these telescopes' pupil creates new problems for Adaptive Optics. In particular, the large spiders necessary to support the massive optics of…

X-rays are particularly suited to probe the physics of extreme objects. However, despite the enormous improvements of X-ray Astronomy in imaging, spectroscopy and timing, polarimetry remains largely unexplored. We propose the photoelectric…

Extremely Large Telescopes have overwhelmingly opted for the Pyramid wavefront sensor (PyWFS) over the more widely used Shack-Hartmann WaveFront Sensor (SHWFS) to perform their Single Conjugate Adaptive Optics (SCAO) mode. The PyWFS, a…

We present a technique for measuring the transverse spatial properties of an optical wavefront. Intensity and phase profiles are recovered by analysis of a series of interference patterns produced by the combination of a scanning X-shaped…

The tip-tilt stabilisation system of the 1.8 m Auxiliary Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer was never dimensioned for robust fringe tracking, except when atmospheric seeing conditions are excellent. Increasing the level…

Atmospheric optical turbulence seriously limits the performance of high angular resolution instruments. An 8-night campaign of measurements was carried out at the LAMOST site in 2011, to characterize the optical turbulence. Two instruments…

We experimentally demonstrate a novel interferometric architecture for next-generation gravity missions, featuring a laser ranging interferometer (LRI) that enables monoaxial transmission and reception of laser beams between two optical…

Resource-constrained autonomous robots rely on sparse direct and semi-direct visual-(inertial)-odometry (VO) pipelines, as they provide a favorable tradeoff between accuracy, robustness, and computational cost. However, the performance of…

High quality, repeatable point-spread functions are important for science cases like direct exoplanet imaging, high-precision astrometry, and high-resolution spectroscopy of exoplanets. For such demanding applications, the initial on-sky…