Evaporated thin film sandwich structures of Au-SiOX-Au have been studied. These normally show electroforming effects and subsequently electron emission, electroluminescence, negative resistance and thermal-voltage memory effects. Previous work in the field is critically reviewed. It was shown that the time dependence of the device current and emission current can be explained by making certain modifications to the filamentary conduction theory of Dearnaley. Detailed direct current-voltage measurements have revealed the existence of two different types of breakdown behaviour. At voltages less than 20 V single-hole breakdowns were observed, while in the voltage range 20-30 V large scale irreversible breakdown behaviour took place. The dependence of the voltage at which this occurs (Vß) on insulator thickness and temperature, together with measurements of the device temperature at breakdown and visual evidence of damage after breakdown, has led to the conclusion that this type of breakdown is a thermal effect. Such measurements also pointed to the existence of a high field region within the insulator, and potential distribution measurements confirmed this hypothesis. The high field region was also in evidence at low temperatures where the device current (Ic) showed a log Ic α Vb1/2 dependence on applied voltage (Vb). Measurements of electron attenuation lengths in SiOx gave values of 400-1000 Å irrespective of temperature. The temperature independence was consistent with the emitted electron energy distributions at 77 and 300 K. It was shown that electrons underwent Bragg diffraction through the top Au electrode. The angular distribution of emitted electrons became more isotropic with increasing voltage. Measurements on other systems showed that Al-SiOx/B2O3-Al devices could withstand very high voltages and give improved emission efficiency, while Au-CaBr2-Au and Au-Si3N4-Au devices showed very high initial currents and current-voltage characteristics which were irreversible.

Cette thèse étudie l’estimation de vitesse de rotation d’un corps rigide à partir de mesures de directions (par exemple champ magnétique, direction du soleil) embarquées. L’objectif est de remplacer les gyromètres qui sont chers comparés aux autres capteurs inertiels et sujets à des saturations et à des dysfonctionnements. Dans une première partie de la thèse, on traite les cas spécifiques d’une rotation à axe fixe ou légèrement variable. Dans une seconde partie, on traite le cas d’une rotation quelconque par un observateur asymptotique non-linéaire. On construit l’observateur à partir de mesures de deux vecteurs de référence non colinéaires, ou bien d’un seul vecteur. La connaissance des coordonnées inertielles des vecteurs de référence n’est pas nécessaire. On étend ensuite l’observateur pour estimer en plus le couple et les paramètres d’inertie. Les équations d’Euler jouent un rôle central dans les travaux présentés ici. Il apparaît que, du moins pour les illustrations considérées, les gyromètres peuvent être remplacés par un algorithme d’estimation basé sur des capteurs de direction qui sont bien moins chers et plus robustes. / This thesis addresses the general question of estimating the angular rate of a rigid body from on-board direction sensors (e.g. magnetometers, Sun sensors). The objective is to replace rate gyros which are very expensive compared to direction sensors, prone to saturation during high rate rotations and subject to failure. In a first part of the thesis, we address the specific cases of single-axis and slightly perturbed axis rotations.In a second part, we address the general case by an asymptotic non-linear observer. We build the observer from two non-collinear vector measurements or from a single vector measurements. The knowledge of the inertial coordinates of the reference vectors is not necessary. We then extend the observer to further estimate unknown torques and inertia parameters. The Euler’s equations play a central role in all the works developed in this thesis. It appears that, at least for the illustrative cases considered, rate gyros could be replaced with an estimation algorithm employing direction sensors which are much cheaper,more rugged and more resilient sensors.

We present observations of the Herbig Ae star HD 169142 with the VLT/SPHERE instruments InfraRed Dual-band Imager and Spectrograph (IRDIS) (K1K2 and H2H3 bands) and the Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) (Y, J and H bands). We detect several bright blobs at similar to 180 mas separation from the star, and a faint arc-like structure in the IFS data. Our reference differential imaging (RDI) data analysis also finds a bright ring at the same separation. We show, using a simulation based on polarized light data, that these blobs are actually part of the ring at 180 mas. These results demonstrate that the earlier detections of blobs in the H and K-S bands at these separations in Biller et al. as potential planet/substellar companions are actually tracing a bright ring with a Keplerian motion. Moreover, we detect in the images an additional bright structure at similar to 93 mas separation and position angle of 355 degrees, at a location very close to previous detections. It appears point-like in the YJ and K bands but is more extended in the H band. We also marginally detect an inner ring in the RDI data at similar to 100 mas. Follow-up observations are necessary to confirm the detection and the nature of this source and structure.

Nowadays almost everyone has a smart phone. In addition, as more people use smart phones more applications are being developed for smart phones. Each operating system on the smart phone market has its own applications. Up until a few years ago, developers had to develop an exclusive application for each operating system in order to cover the whole market. A number of cross-platform frameworks have emerged. These frameworks enable developers to use one code base for every operating system. To be able to use most of the code for all platforms makes it easier to maintain and evolve the application. Two of the frameworks that allow cross-platform development are React Native and Ionic. The purpose and goal of the thesis is to evaluate if Ionic 2 is eligible to use as a cross-platform framework in terms of performance. The method used to achieve the goal is based on replication. An application made in React Native is replicated by using Ionic 2. The applications are then evaluated with focus on performance. The applications are evaluated using AndroidViewClient and Trepn profiler. AndriodViewClient is run outside of the OS of the Android device and can control the GUI of a device. AndroidViewClient is used to automate the tests. The metrics used for evaluating the performance are CPU load, memory usage, battery power usage, the size of the application and the size of the Android package kit. Trepn profiler is an application that is installed on the device. Trepn profiler has access to the hardware of the device and is therefore used to measure the first three mentioned metrics.

We show by numerical simulations a fundamental gain in contrast when combining coherently monochromatic light from two adaptive optics (AO) telescopes instead of using a single stand-alone AO telescope, assuming efficient control and acquisition systems at high speed. A contrast gain map is defined as the normalized point spread functions (PSFs) ratio of a single Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) aperture over the dual Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) aperture in Fizeau mode. The global gain averaged across the AO-corrected field of view is improved by a factor of 2 in contrast in long exposures and by a factor of 10 in contrast in short exposures (i.e. in exposures, respectively, longer or shorter than the coherence time). The fringed speckle halo in short exposures contains not only high-angular resolution information, as stated by speckle imaging and speckle interferometry, but also high-contrast imaging information. A high-gain zone is further produced in the valleys of the PSF formed by the dark Airy rings and/or the dark fringes. Earth rotation allows us to exploit various areas in the contrast gain map. A huge-contrast gain in narrow zones can be achieved when both a dark fringe and a dark ring overlap on to an exoplanet. Compared to a single 8-m LBT aperture, the 23-m LBTI Fizeau imager can provide a gain in sensitivity (by a factor of 4), a gain in angular resolution (by a factor of 3) and, as well, a gain in raw contrast (by a factor of 2-1000 varying over the AO-corrected field of view).

We show numerical simulations with monochromatic light in the visible for the LBTI Fizeau imager, including opto-dynamical aberrations due here to adaptive optics (AO) errors and to differential piston fluctuations, while other errors have been neglected. The achievable Strehl by the LBTI using two AO is close to the Strehl provided by a single standalone AO system, as long as other differential wavefront errors are mitigated. The LBTI Fizeau imager is primarily limited by the AO performance and by the differential piston/tip-tilt errors. Snapshots retain high-angular resolution and high-contrast imaging information by freezing the fringes against piston errors. Several merit functions have been critically evaluated in order to characterize point spread functions and the modulation transfer functions for high-contrast imaging applications. The LBTI Fizeau mode can provide an image quality suitable for standard science cases (i.e. a Strehl above 70 per cent) by performing both at a time: an AO correction better than approximate to lambda/18RMS for both short and long exposures, and a piston correction better than approximate to lambda/8 RMS for long exposures or simply below the coherence length for short exposures. Such results, which can be applied to any observing wavelength, suggest that AO and piston control at the LBTI would already improve the contrast at near-and mid-infrared wavelengths. Therefore, the LBTI Fizeau imager can be used for high-contrast imaging, providing a high-Strehl regime (by both AO systems), a cophasing mode (by a fringe tracker) and a burst mode (by a fast camera) to record fringed speckles in short exposures.

Photonic technologies off er numerous advantages for astronomical instruments such as spectrographs and interferometers owing to their small footprints and diverse range of functionalities. Operating at the diffraction-limit, it is notoriously difficult to efficiently couple such devices directly with large telescopes. We demonstrate that with careful control of both the non-ideal pupil geometry of a telescope and residual wavefront errors, efficient coupling with single-mode devices can indeed be realised. A fibre injection was built within the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument. Light was coupled into a single-mode fibre operating in the near-IR (J-H bands) which was downstream of the extreme adaptive optics system and the pupil apodising optics. A coupling efficiency of 86% of the theoretical maximum limit was achieved at 1550 nm for a diffraction-limited beam in the laboratory, and was linearly correlated with Strehl ratio. The coupling efficiency was constant to within <30% in the range 1250-1600 nm. Preliminary on-sky data with a Strehl ratio of 60% in the H-band produced a coupling efficiency into a single-mode fibre of similar to 50%, consistent with expectations. The coupling was >40% for 84% of the time and >50% for 41% of the time. The laboratory results allow us to forecast that extreme adaptive optics levels of correction (Strehl ratio >90% in H-band) would allow coupling of >67% (of the order of coupling to multimode fibres currently) while standard levels of wavefront correction (Strehl ratio >20% in H-band) would allow coupling of >18%. For Strehl ratios <20%, few-port photonic lanterns become a superior choice but the signal-to-noise, and pixel availability must be considered. These results illustrate a clear path to efficient on-sky coupling into a single-mode fibre, which could be used to realise modal-noise-free radial velocity machines, very-long-baseline optical/near-IR interferometers and/or simply exploit photonic technologies in future instrument design.

In 2014 February, the System for High contrast And coronography from R to K at VISual bands (SHARK-VIS) Forerunner, a high contrast experimental imager operating at visible wavelengths, was installed at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). Here we report on the first results obtained by recent on-sky tests. These results show the extremely good performance of the LBT Extreme Adaptive Optics (ExAO) system at visible wavelengths, both in terms of spatial resolution and contrast achieved. Similarly to what was done by Amara & Quanz (2012), we used the SHARK-VIS Forerunner data to quantitatively assess the contrast enhancement. This is done by injecting several different synthetic faint objects in the acquired data and applying the angular differential imaging (ADI) technique. A contrast of the order of 5 x 10(-5) is obtained at 630 nm for angular separations from the star larger than 100 mas. These results are discussed in light of the future development of SHARK-VIS and compared to those obtained by other high contrast imagers operating at similar wavelengths.

We present the Vortex Image Processing (VIP) library, a python package dedicated to astronomical high-contrast imaging. Our package relies on the extensive python stack of scientific libraries and aims to provide a flexible framework for high-contrast data and image processing. In this paper, we describe the capabilities of VIP related to processing image sequences acquired using the angular differential imaging (ADI) observing technique. VIP implements functionalities for building high-contrast data processing pipelines, encompassing pre- and post-processing algorithms, potential source. position and flux estimation, and sensitivity curve. generation. Among the reference point-spread. function subtraction techniques for ADI post-processing, VIP includes several flavors of principal component analysis (PCA) based algorithms, such as annular PCA and incremental PCA algorithms capable of processing big datacubes (of several gigabytes) on a computer with limited memory. Also, we present a novel ADI algorithm based on non-negative matrix factorization, which comes from the same family of low-rank matrix approximations as PCA and provides fairly similar results. We showcase the ADI capabilities of the VIP library using a deep sequence on HR 8799 taken with the LBTI/LMIRCam and its recently commissioned L-band vortex coronagraph. Using VIP, we investigated the presence of additional companions around HR 8799 and did not find any significant additional point source beyond the four known planets. VIP is available at http://github. com/vortex-exoplanet/VIP and is accompanied with Jupyter notebook tutorials illustrating the main functionalities of the library.

The technique of non-redundant masking (NRM) transforms a conventional telescope into an interferometric array. In practice, this provides a much better constrained point-spread function than a filled aperture and thus higher resolution than traditional imaging methods. Here, we describe an NRM data reduction pipeline. We discuss strategies for NRM observations regarding dithering patterns and calibrator selection. We describe relevant image calibrations and use example Large Binocular Telescope data sets to show their effects on the scatter in the Fourier measurements. We also describe the various ways to calculate Fourier quantities, and discuss different calibration strategies. We present the results of image reconstructions from simulated observations where we adjust prior images, weighting schemes, and error bar estimation. We compare two imaging algorithms and discuss implications for reconstructing images from real observations. Finally, we explore how the current state of the art compares to next-generation Extremely Large Telescopes.