Untitled - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire de Grenoble

Chapter 9
Presentation of the team
9.1 Foundation
In the early 90’s, because of the local context and a strong political will at the local, regional and national levels,
boosted by the increasing success of IRAM (whose activities LAOG was intended to back at its creation), the
LAOG has built a capacity to get strongly involved in instrumental work for interferometry: research and development
on one hand, with tight interaction with physics laboratories and industry, realization of instruments
for large equipments, with ESO VLTI at the first place on the other hand. It was then specifically oriented
toward interferometry instrumentation because of the positive momentum created with IRAM and the urgent
need that a French laboratory be more strongly involved in this field (optically oriented). Indeed, in this period,
the first engineers recruitment at LAOG was intended for supporting the expected effort in VLTI instrumentation.
While recruitment and equipment acquisition were continuously backed for years by the tutellae (mostly
CNRS), the VLTI operation was delayed for some years (due to political decisions by ESO and member states).
Then the involvement turned instead to adaptive optics equipment (the GraF spectro-imager for ESO and then
the NAOS adaptive optics system for the VLT) and to instrumental research, i.e. research and development
(R&D) activities and - a quite specific characteristic - technological research (R&T), oriented toward detectors
then integrated optics.
Until 2002, the laboratory size, and specially the technical manpower, has continuously increased to achieve
the foreseen goals. The range of activities and their importance in the laboratory politics became such that the
need for a team oriented toward ”instrumental research” became obvious. Such a team, called GRIL for Group
of Instrumental Research of LAOG has then been created in early 2004. All LAOG researchers or engineers
involved in R&D or instrumental strategic discussions are supposed to participate to GRIL activities together
with students who have a substantial involvement in R&D developments (see section 14.1).
As for the other LAOG teams which have their own specificity, the instrumental research conducted by
GRIL can be dictated by different orientations, for instance defined at another level for the benefit of a larger
community. However, when it comes to the actual building of instruments, LAOG will want to keep an interest
in their scientific exploitation.
9.2 A specific expertise
The present activities of GRIL are closely related to the more-than-10 years development of instrumental and
technological projects in LAOG. Because of its history, expertise and equipment now available are markedly
oriented toward high angular observation techniques and related technological research. Instruments like NAOS
or AMBER do follow the rule while, occasionally, we may handle other projects types (e.g. WIRCAM).
Therefore, LAOG has acquired special expertise on the following topics : adaptive optics (system design, wavefront
sensors, deformable micro-mirrors), integrated optics components for interferometry (conceptual design,
characterization, test), large instrument sub-systems design and interfacing, system and sub-system management,
integration and test, instrumental control, interferometric data treatment. LAOG now has the appropriate
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