7,772 research outputs found
A new method for aspherical surface fitting with large-volume datasets
In the framework of form characterization of aspherical surfaces, European National Metrology Institutes (NMIs) have been developing ultra-high precision machines having the ability to measure aspherical lenses with an uncertainty of few tens of nanometers. The fitting of the acquired aspherical datasets onto their corresponding theoretical model should be achieved at the same level of precision. In this article, three fitting algorithms are investigated: the Limited memory-Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (L-BFGS), the Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) and one variant of the Iterative Closest Point (ICP). They are assessed based on their capacities to converge relatively fast to achieve a nanometric level of accuracy, to manage a large volume of data and to be robust to the position of the data with respect to the model. Nev-ertheless, the algorithms are first evaluated on simulated datasets and their performances are studied. The comparison of these algorithms is extended on measured datasets of an aspherical lens. The results validate the newly used method for the fitting of aspherical surfaces and reveal that it is well adapted, faster and less complex than the LM or ICP methods.EMR
Spin squeezing, entanglement and quantum metrology with Bose-Einstein condensates
Squeezed states, a special kind of entangled states, are known as a useful
resource for quantum metrology. In interferometric sensors they allow to
overcome the "classical" projection noise limit stemming from the independent
nature of the individual photons or atoms within the interferometer. Motivated
by the potential impact on metrology as wells as by fundamental questions in
the context of entanglement, a lot of theoretical and experimental effort has
been made to study squeezed states. The first squeezed states useful for
quantum enhanced metrology have been proposed and generated in quantum optics,
where the squeezed variables are the coherences of the light field. In this
tutorial we focus on spin squeezing in atomic systems. We give an introduction
to its concepts and discuss its generation in Bose-Einstein condensates. We
discuss in detail the experimental requirements necessary for the generation
and direct detection of coherent spin squeezing. Two exemplary experiments
demonstrating adiabatically prepared spin squeezing based on motional degrees
of freedom and diabatically realized spin squeezing based on internal hyperfine
degrees of freedom are discussed.Comment: Phd tutorial, 23 pages, 17 figure
Wetting of anisotropic sinusoidal surfaces - experimental and numerical study of directional spreading
Directional wettability, i.e. variation of wetting properties depending on the surface orientation, can be achieved by anisotropic surface texturing. A new high precision process can produce homogeneous sinusoidal surfaces (in particular parallel grooves) at the micro-scale, with a nano-scale residual roughness five orders of magnitude smaller than the texture features. Static wetting experiments have shown that this pattern, even with a very small aspect ratio, can induce a strong variation of contact angle depending on the direction of observation. A comparison with numerical simulations (using Surface Evolver software) shows good agreement and could be used to predict the fluid-solid interaction and droplet behaviour on textured surfaces. Two primary mechanisms of directional spreading of water droplets on textured stainless steel surface have been identified. The first one is the mechanical barrier created by the textured surface peaks, this limits spreading in perpendicular direction to the surface anisotropy. The second one is the capillary action inside the sinusoidal grooves accelerating spreading along the grooves. Spreading has been shown to depend strongly on the history of wetting and internal drop dynamics
High Precision CTE-Measurement of SiC-100 for Cryogenic Space-Telescopes
We present the results of high precision measurements of the thermal
expansion of the sintered SiC, SiC-100, intended for use in cryogenic
space-telescopes, in which minimization of thermal deformation of the mirror is
critical and precise information of the thermal expansion is needed for the
telescope design. The temperature range of the measurements extends from room
temperature down to 10 K. Three samples, #1, #2, and #3 were
manufactured from blocks of SiC produced in different lots. The thermal
expansion of the samples was measured with a cryogenic dilatometer, consisting
of a laser interferometer, a cryostat, and a mechanical cooler. The typical
thermal expansion curve is presented using the 8th order polynomial of the
temperature. For the three samples, the coefficients of thermal expansion
(CTE), \bar{\alpha}_{#1}, \bar{\alpha}_{#2}, and \bar{\alpha}_{#3} were
derived for temperatures between 293 K and 10 K. The average and the dispersion
(1 rms) of these three CTEs are 0.816 and 0.002 (/K),
respectively. No significant difference was detected in the CTE of the three
samples from the different lots. Neither inhomogeneity nor anisotropy of the
CTE was observed. Based on the obtained CTE dispersion, we performed an
finite-element-method (FEM) analysis of the thermal deformation of a 3.5 m
diameter cryogenic mirror made of six SiC-100 segments. It was shown that the
present CTE measurement has a sufficient accuracy well enough for the design of
the 3.5 m cryogenic infrared telescope mission, the Space Infrared telescope
for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA).Comment: in press, PASP. 21 pages, 4 figure
Experimental comparison of dynamic tracking performanceof iGPS and laser tracker
External metrology systems are increasingly being integrated with traditional industrial articulated robots, especially in the aerospace industries, to improve their absolute accuracy for precision operations such as drilling, machining and jigless assembly. While currently most of the metrology assisted robotics control systems are limited in their position update rate, such that the robot has to be stopped in order to receive a metrology coordinate update, some recent efforts are addressed toward controlling robots using real-time metrology data. The indoor GPS is one of the metrology systems that may be used to provide real-time 6DOF data to a robot controller. Even if there is a noteworthy literature dealing with the evaluation of iGPS performance, there is, however, a lack of literature on how well the iGPS performs under dynamic conditions. This paper presents an experimental evaluation of the dynamic measurement performance of the iGPS, tracking the trajectories of an industrial robot. The same experiment is also repeated using a laser tracker. Besides the experiment results presented, this paper also proposes a novel method for dynamic repeatability comparisons of tracking instrument
Twin-photon techniques for photo-detector calibration
The aim of this review paper is to enlighten some recent progresses in
quantum optical metrology in the part of quantum efficiency measurements of
photo-detectors performed with bi-photon states. The intrinsic correlated
nature of entangled photons from Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion
phenomenon has opened wide horizons to a new approach for the absolute
measurement of photo-detector quantum efficiency, outgoing the requirement for
conventional standards of optical radiation; in particular the simultaneous
feature of the creation of conjugated photons led to a well known technique of
coincidence measurement, deeply understood and implemented for standard uses.
On the other hand, based on manipulation of entanglement developed for Quantum
Information protocols implementations, a new method has been proposed for
quantum efficiency measurement, exploiting polarisation entanglement in
addition to energy-momentum and time ones, that is based on conditioned
polarisation state manipulation. In this review, after a general discussion on
absolute photo-detector calibration, we compare these different methods, in
order to give an accurate operational sketch of the absolute quantum efficiency
measurement state of the art
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