Related papers: Optical Tests of a 2.5-m diameter Liquid Mirror: B…
We have built and tested a 3.7-m diameter liquid mirror that rotates on a ball bearing. We have carried out extensive optical tests. We find that although the ball bearing has a poor quality, the quality of the mirror, with mercury layers…
I review the present status of liquid mirror telescopes. In a nutshell: LMTs do work and several have been built and used. Extensive interferometric tests of liquid mirrors (the largest one having a diameter of 2.5 meters) show diffraction…
The surface of a spinning liquid takes the shape of a paraboloid that can be used as a reflecting mirror. This very old and nearly forgotten concept has recently been revived and I review its present status. Extensive interferometric tests…
We review the present status of liquid mirror telescopes. Interferometric tests of liquid mirrors (the largest one having a diameter of 2.5 meters ) show excellent optical qualities. The basic technology is now sufficiently reliable that it…
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…
High reflective coatings are used in many physics experiments. Despite the high quality of the opticalcoating, the performances of the mirrors is altered by the scattered light induced by micrometers sizedefects in the coating layers. The…
A light beam changes direction as it enters a liquid at an angle from another medium, such as air. Should the liquid contain molecules that lack mirror symmetry, then it has been predicted by Fresnel that the light beam will not only change…
We present a new class of magnetically shaped deformable liquid mirrors made of a magnetic liquid (ferrofluid). Deformable liquid mirrors offer advantages with respect to deformable solid mirrors: large deformations, low costs and the…
Radiation pressure on a flat mirror submerged in a transparent liquid, depends not only on the refractive index n of the liquid, but also on the phase angle psi_0 of the Fresnel reflection coefficient of the mirror, which could be anywhere…
Through the study of the power spectra of a monochromatic light beam reflected by metallic mirrors, fluctuations in their reflectance is observed. The power spectra were obtained down to a factor $10^{-6}$ below the Standard Quantum Limit,…
We measure the difference in the scattering probability when an experiment scattering longitudinally polarized 221 MeV protons from liquid hydrogen is replaced by its mirror image. The result depends on the interplay between the weak and…
We entertain the use of light dependent resistors as a viable option as measuring sensors in optics laboratory experiments or classroom demonstrations. The main advantages of theses devices are essentially very low cost, easy handling and…
In this paper we present a review of the existing data on interferential mirror birefringence. We also report new measurements of two sets of mirrors that confirm that mirror phase retardation per reflection decreases when mirror…
We present preliminary results of observations made, during the spring of 1996, with the 3-m liquid mirror telescope of the NASA Orbital Debris Observatory. A 20-arcmin-wide strip of sky was observed at latitude of 32deg56 N using 10…
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…
We study theoretically the internal thermal noise of a mirror coated on a plano-convex substrate. The comparison with a cylindrical mirror of the same mass shows that the effect on a light beam can be reduced by a factor 10, improving the…
We present high-reflectivity substrate-transferred single-crystal GaAs/AlGaAs interference coatings at a center wavelength of 4.54 um with record-low excess optical loss below 10 parts per million. These high-performance mirrors are…
Dielectric mirrors comprising thin-film multilayers are widely used in optical experiments because they can achieve substantially higher reflectance compared to metal mirrors. Here we investigate potential problems that can arise when…
In this paper, first we present a review of experimental data corresponding to phase retardation per reflection of interferential mirrors. Then, we report our new measurements on both commercial and tailor-made mirrors. To be able to…
We report the measurement of a large optical reflection matrix (RM) of a highly disordered medium. Incident optical fields onto a turbid sample are controlled by a spatial light modulator, and the corresponding fields reflected from the…