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Register a new userReview: Far-Infrared Instrumentation and Technology Development for the Next Decade
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Far-infrared astronomy has advanced rapidly since its inception in the late 1950s, driven by a maturing technology base and an expanding community of researchers. This advancement has shown that observations at far-infrared wavelengths are important in nearly all areas of astrophysics, from the search for habitable planets and the origin of life, to the earliest stages of galaxy assembly in the first few hundred million years of cosmic history. The combination of a still developing portfolio of technologies, particularly in the field of detectors, and a widening ensemble of platforms within which these technologies can be deployed, means that far-infrared astronomy holds the potential for paradigm-shifting advances over the next decade. In this review, we examine current and future far-infrared observing platforms, including ground-based, sub-orbital, and space-based facilities, and discuss the technology development pathways that will enable and enhance these platforms to best address the challenges facing far-infrared astronomy in the 21st century.
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This paper reviews some of the key enabling technologies for advanced and future laser interferometer gravitational wave detectors, which must combine test masses with the lowest possible optical and acoustic losses, with high stability lasers and various techniques for suppressing noise. Sect. 1 of this paper presents a review of the acoustic properties of test masses. Sect. 2 reviews the technology of the amorphous dielectric coatings which are currently universally used for the mirrors in advanced laser interferometers, but for which lower acoustic loss would be very advantageous. In sect. 3 a new generation of crystalline optical coatings that offer a substantial reduction in thermal noise is reviewed. The optical properties of test masses are reviewed in sect. 4, with special focus on the properties of silicon, an important candidate material for future detectors. Sect. 5 of this paper presents the very low noise, high stability laser technology that underpins all advanced and next generation laser interferometers.
The Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is a set of mission concepts for the next generation of UVOIR space observatory with a primary aperture diameter in the 8-m to 16-m range that will allow us to perform some of the most challenging observations to answer some of our most compelling questions, including Is there life elsewhere in the Galaxy? We have identified two different telescope architectures, but with similar optical designs, that span the range in viable technologies. The architectures are a telescope with a monolithic primary mirror and two variations of a telescope with a large segmented primary mirror. This approach provides us with several pathways to realizing the mission, which will be narrowed to one as our technology development progresses. The concepts invoke heritage from HST and JWST design, but also take significant departures from these designs to minimize complexity, mass, or both. Our report provides details on the mission concepts, shows the extraordinary scientific progress they would enable, and describes the most important technology development items. These are the mirrors, the detectors, and the high-contrast imaging technologies, whether internal to the observatory, or using an external occulter. Experience with JWST has shown that determined competitors, motivated by the development contracts and flight opportunities of the new observatory, are capable of achieving huge advances in technical and operational performance while keeping construction costs on the same scale as prior great observatories.
The Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER) has been working for a decade to reduce the time and cost of designing, building and deploying new digital radio-astronomy instruments. Today, CASPER open-source technology powers over 45 scientific instruments worldwide, and is used by scientists and engineers at dozens of academic institutions. In this paper we catalog the current offerings of the CASPER collaboration, and instruments past and present built by CASPER users and developers. We describe the ongoing state of software development, as CASPER looks to support a broader range of programming environments and hardware and ensure compatibility with the latest vendor tools.
A significant opportunity for synergy between pure research and asteroid resource research exists. We provide an overview of the state of the art in asteroid resource utilization, and highlight where we can accelerate the closing of knowledge gaps, leading to the utilization of asteroid resources for growing economic productivity in space.
The far-infrared (FIR) regime is one of the few wavelength ranges where no astronomical data with sub-arcsecond spatial resolution exist. Neither of the medium-term satellite projects like SPICA, Millimetron nor O.S.T. will resolve this malady. For many research areas, however, information at high spatial and spectral resolution in the FIR, taken from atomic fine-structure lines, from highly excited carbon monoxide (CO), light hydrids, and especially from water lines would open the door for transformative science. A main theme will be to trace the role of water in proto-planetary disks, to observationally advance our understanding of the planet formation process and, intimately related to that, the pathways to habitable planets and the emergence of life. Furthermore, key observations will zoom into the physics and chemistry of the star-formation process in our own Galaxy, as well as in external galaxies. The FIR provides unique tools to investigate in particular the energetics of heating, cooling and shocks. The velocity-resolved data in these tracers will reveal the detailed dynamics engrained in these processes in a spatially resolved fashion, and will deliver the perfect synergy with ground-based molecular line data for the colder dense gas.
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