Tunable etalons and other applications of multi-application low-voltage piezoelectric instrument control electronics (MALICE)
Alan D. Scott, Rodney Norman, Liping Zhou · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2004
EMS have developed low voltage piezoelectric (LVPZT) tunable filters for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and a wide field tunable Michelson for the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) Stratospheric Wind Interferometer For Transport studies (SWIFT) instrument. As a spin-off from this work, we have developed a prototype control system for ground-based interferometric optics using LVPZTs and capacitive displacement sensor feedback. The system is designed to control three channels in parallel with a measurement resolution target of <0.1 Å/√Hz, and thermal drift bandwidth limit of ~1 Hz over a dynamic motion range of ~8 μm. The prototype Multi-Application LVPZT Instrument Control Electronics (MALICE) system will be delivered in fall 2004 with a field-widened Michelson to perform observations of atmospheric wave phenomena at remote weather stations. We describe the performance of the MALICE prototype and its applications to astronomical imaging and remote sensing.