Groupe R&D optique & instrumentation

New article from PhD student Anne-Laure Cheffot et al. published in Optics Express about Measuring the cophasing state of a segmented mirror with a wavelength sweep and a Zernike phase contrast sensor. Congrats !

During the confinement set against the COVID19 pandemic, the GRD group is still fully operational. Most of our research can be done by teleworking and remote control of our testbeds.
Unfortunately, the starting date of two new members has to be postponed, although both have been integrated to the team through our remote communication channels.
Iva LAGINJA, 2nd year PhD student in partnership between STScI (Baltimore, R. Soummer) and ONERA (JF Sauvage, T. Fusco). Iva works on cophasing segmented telescopes for high-contrast imaging applications. After 1.5yr at Baltimore, Iva is to finish her PhD program here at LAM.
Felipe BUSTOS PEDREROS, Marie Curie postdoctoral Fellow. Felipe works on wavefront sensing techniques using laser guide stars.
Welcome to the team !
Finally, this month we had three new publications in the team :
Lemared, Ferrari, et al., accepted in Optics Express : Stress mirror polishing for future large lightweight mirrors : design using shape optimization.
Correia, Fauvarque, et al., accepted in MNRAS : Performance limits of adaptive-optics/high contrast imagers with pyramid wave-front sensors.
Fusco et al., accepted in A&A : Reconstruction of the ground-layer adaptive-optics point spread function for MUSE Wide Field Mode observations.

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.