Related papers: Liquid Mirrors: A Review
Digital micromirror devices have gained popularity in wavefront shaping, offering a high frame rate alternative to liquid crystal spatial light modulators. They are relatively inexpensive, offer high resolution, are easy to operate, and a…
Optical resonators are increasingly important tools in science and technology. Their applications range from laser physics, atomic clocks, molecular spectroscopy, and single-photon generation to the detection, trapping and cooling of atoms…
If uncorrected, the Coriolis force due to the rotation of the Earth causes significant aberration of images produced by large liquid-mirror telescopes. We show that this problem can be eliminated by a fixed compensating tilt of the…
The 4m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) is the first optical survey telescope in India that performs zenithal observations of a 22$'$ wide strip of the sky. To determine the portion of the sky covered by the ILMT during the…
Reflective membrane mirrors provide a lightweight, low-cost alternative to traditional optics for next-generation large-aperture telescopes, but their non-rigid, thin structure poses challenges for surface metrology. We present a…
The mirrors installed on Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes like the MAGIC telescopes in La Palma, Canary Islands, are constantly exposed to the harsh environment. They have to withstand wind-induced corrosion from dust and sand,…
Four ongoing microlensing experiments have produced important new results but also big puzzles, the major one being that the expected classes of lenses cannot account for the observed distribution of time scales. I discuss future…
We introduce our new program to develop two-dimensional MEMS arrays of individually addressable micro-mirrors (''Micro-Mirror Devices'', MMDs) specifically optimized for astronomy, multi-slit spectroscopy in particular. After reviewing the…
The advent of extremely large telescopes will bring unprecedented light-collecting power and spatial resolution, but it will also lead to a significant increase in the size and complexity of focal-plane instruments. The use of freeform…
The size of the optics used in observatories is often limited by fabrication, metrology, and handling technology, but having a large primary mirror provides significant benefits for scientific research. The evolution of rocket launch…
Equipped with a suitable optical relay system, telescopes employing low-cost fixed primary mirrors could point and track while delivering high-quality images to a fixed location. Such an optical tracking system would enable liquid-mirror…
On-chip optical trapping systems allow for high scalability and lower the barrier to access. Systems capable of trapping multiple particles typically come with high cost and complexity. Here we present a technique for making parabolic…
Orbital debris presents a growing risk to space operations, and is becoming a significant source of contamination of astronomical images. Much of the debris population is uncatalogued, making the impact more difficult to assess. We present…
All of the proposed explanations for the microlensing events observed towards the LMC have difficulties. One of these proposed explanations, LMC self-lensing, which invokes ordinary LMC stars as the long sought-after lenses, has recently…
The absolute reflectance of a reflector and its point spread function are the key parameters of a telescope for measuring light flux. Typically, one is using low-cost technologies for producing mirrors for the needs of astro-particle…
Cylinder-shaped perfect lens deduced from the coordinate transformation method is proposed. The previously reported perfect slab lens is noticed to be a limiting form of the cylindrical lens when the inner radius approaches infinity with…
Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology can provide for deformable mirrors (DMs) with excellent performance within a favorable economy of scale. Large MEMS-based astronomical adaptive optics (AO) systems such as the Gemini Planet…
The 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) will soon become operational at the newly developed Devasthal observatory near Nainital (Uttarakhand, India). Coupled with a 4k $\times$ 4k pixels CCD detector and TDI optical corrector,…
We present the research status of a deformable mirror made of a magnetic liquid whose surface is actuated by a triangular array of small current carrying coils. We demonstrate that the mirror can correct a 11 microns low order aberrated…
The Large Zenith Telescope Survey whose construction is almost completed (first light expected in spring 2002) near Vancouver (Canada) is designed to observed a total strip of ~17' x 120 deg in 40 medium-band filters spanning 4000-10000 A.…