Related papers: A high sensitivity tool for geophysical applicatio…
This paper presents the results of the past seven years of experimental investigation and testing done on the two-stage twelve-axis vibration isolation platform for Advanced LIGO gravity waves observatories. This five-ton two-and-half-meter…
Optical gyroscopes based on the Sagnac effect are the cornerstone of precision orientation and navigation. However, their bulky form factors prevent deployment in emerging mobile and autonomous systems. On nanophotonic platforms, the Sagnac…
Space debris is a major problem for all space-active nations. Adopting high precision measuring techniques will help to produce the reliable and accurate catalogue for space debris and collision avoidance. Laser Ranging is a kind of…
Ultra-stable, quasi-monochromatic laser light forms the basis for high-precision interferometric measurements, e.g. for observing gravitational waves and for time keeping with optical clocks. Optical frequency conversion enables access to…
The Moon's permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) are among the coldest places in the Solar System and are expected to become key landing sites for upcoming international space agency missions. Their proximity to peaks of perpetual solar power…
Place recognition plays an important role in achieving robust long-term autonomy. Real-world robots face a wide range of weather conditions (e.g. overcast, heavy rain, and snowing) and most sensors (i.e. camera, LiDAR) essentially…
Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) measurements are crucial for advanced exploration of the laws of fundamental gravitational physics and geophysics. Current LLR technology allows us to measure distances to the Moon with a precision approaching 1…
The Large Observatory for X-ray Timing (LOFT) is one of the four candidate ESA M3 missions considered for launch in the 2022 time-frame. It is specifically designed to perform fast X-ray timing and probe the status of the matter near black…
Precise measurements of the Earth-Moon distance by the lunar laser ranging (LLR), which begun in the early 1970's, contributed significantly to geodesy, geophysics, and lunar planetology, as well as enabled astrophysicists to perform…
We present a compact and robust transportable ultra-stable laser system with minimum fractional frequency instability of $1\times10^{-15}$ at integration times between 1 to 10 s. The system was conceived as a prototype of a subsystem of a…
GRAVITY is a new instrument to coherently combine the light of the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope Interferometer to form a telescope with an equivalent 130 m diameter angular resolution and a collecting area of 200…
Arm-locking is a technique for stabilizing the frequency of a laser in an inter-spacecraft interferometer by using the spacecraft separation as the frequency reference. A candidate technique for future space-based gravitational wave…
The superb precision of an atomic clock is derived from its stability. Atomic clocks based on optical (rather than microwave) frequencies are attractive because of their potential for high stability, which scales with operational frequency.…
A high sensitivity force sensor based on dielectric microspheres in vacuum, optically trapped by a single, upward-propagating laser beam, is described. Off-axis parabolic mirrors are used both to focus the 1064~nm trapping beam and to…
A low noise laser system for atom interferometry is realized with phase-locked fiber lasers, where the performance of the OPLL is greatly enhanced by the FEOM feedback loop and the narrow linewidths. The laser system demonstrated contribute…
We present an optically-detected mechanical accelerometer that achieves a sensitivity of 100 ng/rtHz over a bandwidth of 10kHz and is traceable. We have incorporated a Fabry-Perot fiber-optic micro-cavity that is currently capable of…
The most promising concept for low frequency gravitational wave observatories are laser interferometric detectors in space. It is usually assumed that the noise floor for such a detector is dominated by optical shot noise in the signal…
We show that a magnetically levitated microsphere in high vacuum can be used as an accelerometer by comparing its response to that of a commercially available geophone. This system shows great promise for ultrahigh acceleration…
High precision astrometry aims at source position determination to a very small fraction of the diffraction image size, in high SNR regime. One of the key limitations to such goal is the optical response variation of the telescope over a…
In this article we propose a new method for reducing Newtonian noise in laser-interferometric gravitational-wave detectors located on the Earth's surface. We show that by excavating meter-scale recesses in the ground around the main test…