Claudia Reinlein (Fraunhofer Institute Jena)

Active and Adaptive Optics at the Fraunhofer IOF
When Dec 14, 2016 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
What
  • Special Seminar
  • Colloquium
Where SH, Seminar room
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Active and Adaptive Optics is more and more used in ground-based telescopes and also in discussion for space telescopes. For both types of systems there are completely different technological requirements. While space telescopes mainly aim for active optics, ground-based systems apply both active and adaptive optics.

This talk describes the technological features and the state of the art of "deformable mirrors / AO systems". And here the focus will be set onto research and development projects of the Fraunhofer IOF (Jena).

In the framework of an ESA project, a test breadboard is developed, in order to demonstrate the capability to compensate for static aberrations in using active mirrors in space telescopes. In the future, telescopes with a diameter of 4-16m will be used for the search for extraterrestrial life. In this context, IOF develops and investigates an active mirror with "set-and-forget" characteristics to compensate for aberrations conditional of manufacture and assembly.

For the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) a technology development for extreme AO (X-AO) is conducted. In this context, the talk will inform about a technological pre-investigation (design) of a deformable mirror with 11000 actuators.

For laser communication between a ground-station and a geostationary satellite, the pre-compensation of aberrations is a technique to increase the signal intensity at the receiver and to attenuate disturbing speckles. The talk will also present the real-time AO of the Fraunhofer IOF and its compensatory efficiency as a function of the correction angle.