Groupe R&D optique & instrumentation

The latest camera from First Light Imaging company, the low-noise fast C-RED3 camera, made the headlines of the Laser Focus World magazine this month for its applications for free space optical communications (FSO). This major highlight was trigered by a noteworthy presentation of FLI founder and GRD member Jean-Luc GACH at the SPIE Photonics. Congrats to the team for this achievement !
The WFIRST project just passed the Agency Program Management Council (APMC) review last week : this was the last Key Decision Point of the evaluation process before entering into Phase C. The WFIRST project has now a formal commitment from NASA to proceed with a firm technical baseline, implementation plan, budget profile, and launch date (2025).
On LAM side, we will host a WFIRST CGI/OAP meeting on the 18-19th of March with the JPL team, to launch the fabrication phase of all the Off-Axis Parabolas for the Coronagraphic instrument. We are also entering in Phase C for this part of the project.

This January, Eduard MUSLIMOV, who worked on innovative optical designs for applications with curved detectors, completed his postdoc position in the group and left for a new position either at RAL Space or at ASTRON/NOVA. All the best for you new job !
Also this month, the first prototype Off-Axis Parabola for the WFIRST-CGI instrument designed by Melanie ROULET an polished by Michel MARKOS with stress-polishing techniques down to 2.5nm RMS form error and 2Å roughness was accepted by NASA-JPL, which is considering upgrading it as a flight model. Congrats for this tremendous success !
The APPLY project to provide the community with operational solutions for Adaptive Optics PSF prediction, funded by an ANR grant, started its activities this month under the leasership of Benoit NEICHEL. See here for a more detailed article !
A group of postdocs and PhD students from GRD is developing a new adaptive optics project, PAPYRUS, to equip the T152 telescope at OHP. The system, equipped with a pyramid wavefront sensor, will be assembled at LAM and installed at OHP over the summer.