Lyot-based Ultra-Fine Pointing Control System for Phase Mask Coronagraphs

High performance coronagraphic imaging at small inner working angle requires efficient control of low order aberrations. The absence of accurate pointing control at small separation not only degrades coronagraph starlight rejection but also increases the risk of confusing planet's photons with starlight leaking next to the coronagraph focal plane mask center. Addressing this issue is essential for preventing coronagraphic leaks, and we have thus developed a new concept, the Lyot-based pointing control system (LPCS), to control pointing errors and other low order aberrations within a coronagraph. The LPCS uses residual starlight reflected by the Lyot stop at the pupil plane. Our simulation has demonstrated pointing errors measurement accuracy between 2-12 nm for tip-tilt at 1.6 micron with a four quadrant phase mask coronagraph.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of AO4ELTs3 conference, Paper 12667, Florence, Italy, May 201

Expected Performance of a Self-Coherent Camera

Residual wavefront errors in optical elements limit the performance of coronagraphs. To improve their efficiency, different types of devices have been proposed to correct or calibrate these errors. In this paper, we study one of these techniques proposed by Baudoz et al. 2006 and called Self-Coherent Camera (SCC). The principle of this instrument is based on the lack of coherence between the stellar light and the planet that is searched for. After recalling the principle of the SCC, we simulate its performance under realistic conditions and compare it with the performance of differential imaging.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Lyot-based Low Order Wavefront Sensor for Phase-mask Coronagraphs: Principle, Simulations and Laboratory Experiments

High performance coronagraphic imaging of faint structures around bright stars at small angular separations requires fine control of tip, tilt and other low order aberrations. When such errors occur upstream of a coronagraph, they results in starlight leakage which reduces the dynamic range of the instrument. This issue has been previously addressed for occulting coronagraphs by sensing the starlight before or at the coronagraphic focal plane. One such solution, the coronagraphic low order wave-front sensor (CLOWFS) uses a partially reflective focal plane mask to measure pointing errors for Lyot-type coronagraphs. To deal with pointing errors in low inner working angle phase mask coronagraphs which do not have a reflective focal plane mask, we have adapted the CLOWFS technique. This new concept relies on starlight diffracted by the focal plane phase mask being reflected by the Lyot stop towards a sensor which reliably measures low order aberrations such as tip and tilt. This reflective Lyot-based wavefront sensor is a linear reconstructor which provides high sensitivity tip-tilt error measurements with phase mask coronagraphs. Simulations show that the measurement accuracy of pointing errors with realistic post adaptive optics residuals are approx. 10^-2 lambda/D per mode at lambda = 1.6 micron for a four quadrant phase mask. In addition, we demonstrate the open loop measurement pointing accuracy of 10^-2 lambda/D at 638 nm for a four quadrant phase mask in the laboratory.Comment: 9 Pages, 11 Figures, to be published in PASP June 2014 issu

Condensation of helium in aerogels and athermal dynamics of the Random Field Ising Model

High resolution measurements reveal that condensation isotherms of $^4$He in a silica aerogel become discontinuous below a critical temperature. We show that this behaviour does not correspond to an equilibrium phase transition modified by the disorder induced by the aerogel structure, but to the disorder-driven critical point predicted for the athermal out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the Random Field Ising Model. Our results evidence the key role of non-equilibrium effects in the phase transitions of disordered systems.Comment: 5 p + suppl. materia

Branch and Bound hybride pour un problème de job-shop soumis à des contraintes de ressources humaines

National audienceNous considérons un problème couplant ordonnancement de production et planification d'agents. On se place ainsi dans un atelier où la production à réaliser requiert divers types de machines dans des séquences variées de type job-shop. Chaque machine nécessite pour son utilisation la présence d'un employé qualifié à son pilotage. Les ressources humaines sont assujetties à des contraintes légales restreignant leur disponibilité. La production doit être entièrement ordonnancée et le critère d'optimisation retenu est la minimisation des coûts salariaux. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous avons développé une méthode exacte hybridant approche arborescente de type Procédure de Séparation et Evaluation Séquentielle et technique de génération de coupes de réalisabilité. Cette méthode exploite la décomposition naturelle du problème global en deux sous-problèmes : un problème de planification d'agents et un problème de job-shop à contraintes de disponibilité. Des méthodes de génération d'inégalités valides en pré-process (notamment du probing) ont en outre été étudiées. Notre approche s'avère particulièrement adaptée à la problématique ; ses résultats dominent en effet ceux obtenus avec l'un des meilleurs solveurs commerciaux actuels (Ilog Cplex 12.1) et ceux obtenus avec les méthodes décrites dans la littérature

Solving an integrated job-shop problem with human resource constraints

International audienceWe propose two exact methods to solve an integrated employee-timetable and job-shop-scheduling problem. The problem is to find a minimum cost employee-timetable, where employees have different competences and work during shifts, so that the production, that corresponds to a job-shop with resource availability constraints, can be achieved. We introduce two new exact procedures: (1) a decomposition and cut generation approach and (2) a hybridization of a cut generation process with a branch and bound strategy. We also propose initial cuts that strongly improve these methods as well as a standard MIP approach. The computational performances of those methods on benchmark instances are compared to that of other methods from the literature

Solving an integrated Job-Shop problem with human resource constraints

This paper investigates the integration of the employee timetabling and production scheduling problems. At the first level, we have to manage a classical employee timetabling problem. At the second level, we aim at supplying a feasible production schedule for a job-shop scheduling problem (NP-hard problem). Instead of using a hierarchical approach as in the current practice, we here integrate the two decision stages and propose two exact methods for solving the resulting problem. The former is similar to the cut generation algorithm proposed in Guyon et. al. 2010) for a problem integrating a classical employee timetabling problem and a polynomially solvable production scheduling problem. The latter is based on a Branch-And-Cut process that exploits the same feasibility cuts than the first approach. Preliminar experimental results on instances proposed in (Artigues et al. 2009) reveal a real interest for the approaches described here

Planification d'agents et ordonnancement de production : règles d'élimination et heuristique

Nous nous intéressons à l'optimisation des systèmes de production avec d'un côté l'ordonnancement de production, dont le but est d'affecter dans le temps des ressources à des tâches à réaliser, et d'un autre côté la gestion du personnel visant généralement à minimiser les coûts de main d'œuvre. Bien qu'il soit admis que, pour obtenir l'optimum global, il faille prendre en compte simultanément ces deux problématiques, en pratique le problème global est souvent résolu dans un processus de décision à deux niveaux. Dans cette étude, nous intégrons ces deux phases de décision et proposons différentes méthodes pour résoudre le problème résultant

Cut generation for an integrated employee timetabling and production scheduling problem

International audienceThis paper investigates the integration of the employee timetabling and production scheduling problems. At the first level, we manage a classical employee timetabling problem. At the second level, we aim at supplying a feasible production schedule for a set of interruptible tasks with qualification requirements and time-windows. Instead of hierarchically solving these two problems as in the current practice, we try here to integrate them and propose two exact methods to solve the resulting problem. The former is based on a Benders decomposition while the latter relies on a specific decomposition and a cut generation process. The relevance of these different approaches is discussed here through experimental results