Related papers: Ultra-Thin Floating Mirrors
Liquid mirror telescopes are of interest to Astronomy because of their very low capital and operating costs. Low cost has a potentially revolutionary impact since it allows one to dedicate a large telescope to a narrowly focused project…
We present a proposal of a new type of telescopes using a rotating parabolic strip as the primary mirror. It is the most principal modification of the design of telescopes from the times of Galileo and Newton. In order to demonstrate the…
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 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,…
We have studied the feasibility and scientific potential of zenith observing liquid mirror telescopes having 20 to 100 m diameters located on the moon. They would carry out deep infrared surveys to study the distant universe and follow up…
Prototype optical microscopes, built to pursue developments in advanced imaging techniques, need specific optomechanical constructions: preferably with high flexibility in the elements arrangement, easy access to the optical paths,…
Many objects in nature and industry are wrapped in a thin sheet to enhance their chemical, mechanical, or optical properties. There are similarly a variety of methods for wrapping, from pressing a film onto a hard substrate, to using…
We study ray optics in the context of double mirror systems, in the limit as the two mirrors approach one another (thin films). This leads to a novel set of differential equations on a mirror surface which have interesting structure as seen…
Thin elastic films can spontaneously attach to liquid interfaces, offering a platform for tailoring their physical, chemical, and optical properties. Current understanding of the elastocapillarity of thin films is based primarily on studies…
Sensitivity and resolution of space telescopes are directly related to the size of the primary mirror. Enabling such future extremely large space telescopes or even arrays of those will require to drastically reduce the areal weight of the…
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…
The recently proposed optical elements containing semitransparent wavelike films embedded into the transparent material are investigated. Such optical elements do not distort a wave transmitted through them. Novel optical elements can be…
Despite the recent advances in augmented reality (AR), which has shown the potential to significantly impact on our daily lives by offering a new way to manipulate and interact with virtual information, minimizing visual discomfort due to…
We developed a method for significantly lowering the viscosity achievable for a hydrodynamic lattice gas method. The key advance is the derivation of a mirror state that allows for a reduction of viscosity by more than an order of magnitude…
We discuss a family of two-mirror correctors that can greatly extend the field accessible to a fixed telescope such as a liquid mirror telescope. The performance of the corrector is remarkable since it gives excellent images in patches…
We consider the feasibility of large-scale free-standing thin liquid film experiment in the space environment as a new realization to study two-dimensional hydrodynamics. We identify material and environmental criteria necessary to avoid…
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…
We report the development of a detection optics for the integration of Raman scattering and scanning probe microscopy at low temperature based on a parabolic mirror. In our set-up half of the paraboloid mirror covers a solid angle of $\pi$…
We demonstrate a means of creating a digital image by using a two axis tilt micromirror to scan a scene. For each different orientation we extract a single grayscale value from the mirror and combine them to form a single composite image.…
We present a novel experimental setup to investigate two-dimensional thermal convection in a freestanding thin liquid film. We develop a setup for the reproducible generation of freestanding thin liquid films. Such films can be produced in…