Seminario DAS: GRAVITY+: the next generation interferometry

Speaker: Dr. Florentin Millour
Affiliation: Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur

Abstract: For 5 years now, the new instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer GRAVITY+ has been developed in Europe and recently installed in Chile, at the Paranal Observatory. It consists in several upgrades of the GRAVITY instrument and of the VLTI infrastructure, namely an improved fringe tracker, more transmissive instrument, new adaptive optics (GPAO), dual field fringe tracking for faint object characterization (GRAVITY Wide), new dual field delay lines (BCDDL) and better vibration management, altogether providing a factor 100 improve in sensitivity of the instrument. GRAVITY+ AO (and as well other aspects) bring as well great improvements to the other existing instruments MATISSE and PIONIER. These new features will enable high-z AGN studies and exoplanets characterization. I will present several aspects of this leap-forward in terms of sensitivity and performances of the best-in-class interferometer, with my biased view of the responsible of the adaptive optics integration in Europe. I will also try to present the perspectives it opens for the whole astrophysics community.