Related papers: GRAVITY: The adaptive optics assisted, two object …

AIMS: We have found that the interferometric visibilities of VLTI-AMBER observations, extracted via the standard reduction package, are significantly biased when faint targets are concerned. The visibility biases derive from a time variable…

The recent study of the strong gravitational lens ESO 325-G004 [1] leads to a new possibility for testing General Relativity and its extensions. Such gravity lens observational studies can be instrumental for establishing a limitation on…

We study a space-based gravity gradiometer based on cold atom interferometry and its potential for the Earth's gravitational field mapping. The instrument architecture has been proposed in [Carraz et al., Microgravity Science and Technology…

The gravity field maps of the satellite gravimetry missions GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and GRACE Follow-On are derived by means of precise orbit determination. The key observation is the biased inter-satellite range,…

The very recent years have seen a promising start in scientific publications making use of images produced by near-infrared long-baseline interferometry. The technique has reached, at last, a technical maturity level that opens new avenues…

We report the demonstration of a sensitive absolute gravity gradiometer based on light-pulse atom interference techniques. The gradiometer consists of two absolute accelerometers operated in a differential mode. We report a differential…

In order to put MIDI/VLTI observations of AGNs on a significant statistical basis, the number of objects had to be increased dramatically from the few prominent bright cases to over 20. For this, correlated fluxes as faint as ~ 150 mJy need…

ERIS is an instrument that will both extend and enhance the fundamental diffraction limited imaging and spectroscopy capability for the VLT. It will replace two instruments that are now being maintained beyond their operational lifetimes,…

VLTi Spectro-Imager (VSI) is a proposition for a second generation VLTI instrument which is aimed at providing the ESO community with the capability of performing image synthesis at milli-arcsecond angular resolution. VSI provides the VLTI…

The black hole at the Galactic centre exhibits regularly flares of radiation, the origin of which is still not understood. In this article, we study the ability of the near-future GRAVITY infrared instrument to constrain the nature of these…

Two of the three instruments proposed to ESO for the second generation instrumentation of the VLTI would use integrated optics for beam combination. Several design are studied, including co-axial and multi-axial recombination. An extensive…

LOFT, the Large Observatory for X-ray Timing, is a new space mission concept devoted to observations of Galactic and extra-Galactic sources in the X-ray domain with the main goals of probing gravity theory in the very strong field…

Infrared observations of Sgr A* probe the region close to the event horizon of the black hole at the Galactic center. These observations can constrain the properties of low-luminosity accretion as well as that of the black hole itself. The…

We present the optical and cryo-mechanical solutions for the Spectrograph of VSI (VLTI Spectro-Imager), the second generation near-infrared (J, H and K bands) interferometric instrument for the VLTI. The peculiarity of this spectrograph is…

We present early results from the Faint InfraRed Extragalactic Survey (FIRES) at the VLT, the main goal of which is to study galaxy evolution in a deep, K-band selected sample. With our NIR selection, we select galaxies based on their…

The limiting magnitude is a key issue for optical interferometry. Pairwise fringe trackers based on the integrated optics concepts used for example in GRAVITY seem limited to about K=10.5 with the 8m Unit Telescopes of the VLTI, and there…

Recently several studies have pointed out that gravitational-wave detectors are sensitive to ultralight vector dark matter and can improve the current best constraints given by the Equivalence Principle tests. While a gravitational-wave…

Gravitational lensing offers a powerful probe into the properties of dark matter and is crucial to infer cosmological parameters. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is predicted to find O(10^5) gravitational lenses over the next…

Existing capabilities in laser ranging, optical interferometry and metrology, in combination with precision frequency standards, atom-based quantum sensors, and drag-free technologies, are critical for the space-based tests of fundamental…

We propose a concept for future space gravity missions using cold atom interferometers for measuring the diagonal elements of the gravity gradient tensor and the spacecraft angular velocity. The aim is to achieve better performance than…