Related papers: Building a GRAVITY+ Adaptive Optics Test Bench

The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a wide-field telescope project focused on detecting optical counterparts to gravitational-wave sources. GOTO uses arrays of 40 cm unit telescopes (UTs) on a shared robotic mount,…

The Gemini Observatory is planning to implement a Multi Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) System as a facility instrument for the Gemini-South telescope. The system will include 5 Laser Guide Stars, 3 Natural Guide Stars, and 3 Deformable…

We present a framework that reformulates gravitational lensing as an optical phenomenon governed by an effective refractive index, enabling exploration of modified gravity theories using undergraduate-level mathematics and optics. After…

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…

Interference-fit joints are typically adopted to produce permanent assemblies among mechanical parts. The resulting contact pressure is generally used for element fixing or to allow load transmission. Nevertheless, some special designs take…

Optical beams and starlight distorted by atmospheric turbulence can be corrected with adaptive optics systems to enable efficient coupling into single-mode fibers. Deformable mirrors, used to flatten the wavefront in astronomical…

We present design results of the 2nd generation VLTI instrument GRAVITY beam stabilization and light injection subsystems. Designed to deliver micro-arcsecond astrometry, GRAVITY requires an unprecedented stability of the VLTI optical…

Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) is essential for increasing the corrected Field-of-View (FoV) in astronomical imaging and potentially for free-space optical communications, particularly for small-aperture, transportable systems. We…

Adaptive optics is a technique mostly used on large telescopes. It turns out to be challenging for smaller telescopes (0.5~2m) due to the small isoplanatic angle, small subapertures and high correction speeds needed at visible wavelengths,…

Performances of an adaptive optics (AO) system are directly linked with the quality of its alignment. During the instrument calibration, having open loop fast tools with a large capture range are necessary to quickly assess the system…

The first analytical evaluation of free-hinged-hinged-hinged-free beam, proposed to be used as a primary sensing element for gravity gradiometry, is presented. The results of the evaluation, obtained in quadratures, are applied to the…

The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is an array of wide-field optical telescopes, designed to exploit new discoveries from the next generation of gravitational wave detectors (LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA), study rapidly evolving…

Adaptive Optics has become a key technology for the largest ground-based telescopes currently under or close to begin of construction. Adaptive optics is an indispensable component and has basically only one task, that is to operate the…

We present the installed and fully operational beam stabilization and fiber injection subsystem feeding the 2nd generation VLTI instrument GRAVITY. The interferometer GRAVITY requires an unprecedented stability of the VLTI optical train to…

Accurate optical modeling is important for the design and characterisation of current and next-generation experiments studying the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Geometrical Optics (GO) cannot model diffractive effects. In this work, we…

The availability and performance of laser-based adaptive optics (AO) systems are strongly dependent on the power and quality of the laser beam before being projected to the sky. Frequent and time-consuming alignment procedures are usually…

We analise the efficiency of wavefront reconstruction in the MultiConjugate Adaptive Optics system for the European Solar Telescope (EST). We present preliminary results derived from numerical simulations. We study a 4 meter class telescope…

Direct imaging of exoplanet systems requires the use of coronagraphs to reach high contrast levels (10^-8 to 10^-11) at small angular separations (0.1"). However, the performance of these devices is drastically limited by aberrations (in…

The sensitivity of ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors will be improved in the future via the injection of frequency-dependent squeezed vacuum. The achievable improvement is ultimately limited by losses of the interferometer…

Adaptive optics (AO) is a powerful image correction technique with proven benefits for many life-science microscopy methods. However, the complexity of adding a reflective wavefront modulator and a wavefront sensor into already complicated…