Practical applications of liquid mirrors, astronomical surveys, astronomical applications of the Alford and Gold effect

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My research over the next five years will cover three main topics in astronomy and outside astronomy: 1)An international consortium has initiated the International Liquid Mirror Telescope project, which consists of a 4-m diameter liquid mirror telescope observatory. The project has been fully funded, including a Canadian contribution, and will see first light in 2011. The novelty of the ILMT data comes from the fact that this is the first time that a large telescope will observe the same strip of sky, through a standard set of colored filters, night after night after night. The resulting data set will be unique because of its faintness, wide area, and, foremost, the variability information provided. I am interested in supernova surveys, lensing studies and, arguably the most important contribution of the ILMT: serendipity. 2) Applications of Ferrofluidic Deformable mirrors (FDMs). FDMs are an entirely new class of adaptive optical elements, pioneered at Laval. By coating ferromagnetic liquids we create reflective surfaces that can be shaped with magnetic fields, allowing us to make complex surfaces that can vary in time. We have shown that the technology can deliver on an ambitious goal: To allow an incoming wavefront of arbitrary shape and large amplitude to be transformed upon reflection to an outgoing wavefront of any desired shape. FDMs are far cheaper and more versatile than conventional adaptive optics. We will work on two fronts: a) Improve the characteristics of the mirrors. b)Demonstrate practical applications. 3) I will apply to Astronomy techniques based on an experiment by Alford & Gold originally used to measure the speed of light. I have written several papers that propose novel astronomical applications: a) To observe gravitational lenses. I intend now to carry out astronomical observations. b) Find and observe extremely fast time variations (as short as 1 nanosecond), opening up a new time window in astronomy. c) I also found that ultra-rapid pulsators generate spectral signatures that would allow the detection of astronomical objects sending pulses with time separations shorter than 1/10 of 1/ billion seconds. I will search for the spectral signatures in existing databases of astronomical spectra.