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Precise measurements of the Earth-Moon distance by the lunar laser ranging (LLR), which begun in the early 1970's, contributed significantly to geodesy, geophysics, and lunar planetology, as well as enabled astrophysicists to perform…
Phobos Laser Ranging (PLR) is a concept for a space mission designed to advance tests of relativistic gravity in the solar system. PLR's primary objective is to measure the curvature of space around the Sun, represented by the Eddington…
Faraday rotation has become a powerful tool in a large variety of physics applications. Most prominently, Faraday rotation can be used in precision magnetometry. Here we report the first measurements of gyromagnetic Faraday rotation on a…
We have developed a new technique called Direct Shear Mapping (DSM) to measure gravitational lensing shear directly from observations of a single background source. The technique assumes the velocity map of an un-lensed, stably-rotating…
In recent years the possibility of measuring the temporal change of radial and transverse position of sources in the sky in real time have become conceivable thanks to the thoroughly improved technique applied to new astrometric and…
This lab note introduces the "Stokes Camera," a simple and novel experimental arrangement for real-time measurement of spatial amplitude and polarisation and thus spatially resolved Stokes parameters. It uses a polarisation sensitive camera…
An inert sphere of a few meters diameter, placed in a special stable geosynchronous orbit in perpetuo, can be used for a variety of scientific experiments. Ground-based observations of such a sphere, "GeoSphere", can resolve very difficult…
An experimental test at the intersection of quantum physics and general relativity is proposed: measurement of relativistic frame dragging and geodetic precession using intrinsic spin of electrons. The behavior of intrinsic spin in…
We consider a nearly free falling Earth satellite where atomic wave interferometers are tied to a telescope pointing towards a faraway star. They measure the acceleration and the rotation relatively to the local inertial frame. We calculate…
The origin of magnetic fields in the Universe is an open problem in astrophysics and fundamental physics. Polarization observations with the forthcoming large radio telescopes will open a new era in the observation of magnetic fields and…
New techniques to evaluate the clock effect using light are described. These are based on the flatness of the cylindrical surface containing the world lines of the rays constrained to move on circular trajectories about a spinning mass. The…
The current LAGEOS-LARES 2 experiment aims to accurately measure the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitomagnetic field of the spinning Earth generated by the latter's angular momentum $\boldsymbol{J}$. The key quantity…
We report the experimental observation of a light polarization rotation in vacuum in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. Assuming that data distribution is Gaussian, the average measured rotation is (3.9+/-0.5)e-12 rad/pass, at 5 T…
At present, tracking data for planetary missions largely consists of radio observables: range-rate range and angular position. Future planetary missions may use Interplanetary Laser Ranging (ILR) as a tracking observable. Two-way ILR will…
A precise ground based telescope system was developed for laser communication experiments with the geostationary satellite ARTEMIS of ESA. Precise tracking of the satellite was realized by using time resolved coordinates of the satellite.…
The difference in travel time of corotating and counter-rotating light waves in the field of a central massive and spinning body is studied. The corrections to the special relativistic formula are worked out in a Kerr field. Estimation of…
We have developed a scheme to measure the optical torque, exerted by a laser beam on a phase object, by measuring the orbital angular momentum of the transmitted beam. The experiment is a macroscopic simulation of a situation in optical…
Forthcoming radio surveys will include full polarisation information, which can be potentially useful for weak lensing observations. We propose a new method to measure the (integrated) gravitational field between a source and the observer,…
We present a test of General Relativity, the measurement of the Earth's dragging of inertial frames. Our result is obtained using about 3.5 years of laser-ranged observations of the LARES, LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2 laser-ranged satellites…
Rotation of the large scale solar magnetic field has a great importance for the understanding of solar dynamic, for the search of longitidinal structure and for the study of solar-terrestrial relations. 30-year long observations taken at…