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High-precision astrometry well beyond the capacities of Gaia will provide a unique way to achieve astrophysical breakthroughs, in particular on the nature of dark matter, and a complete survey of nearby habitable exoplanets. In this contribution, we present the scientific cases that require a flexibly-pointing instrument capable of high astrometric accuracy and we review the best mission profiles that can achieve such observations with the current space technology as well as within the boundary conditions defined by space agencies. We also describe the way the differential astrometric measurement is made using reference stars within the field. We show that the ultimate accuracy can be met without drastic constrains on the telescope stability., Comment: SPIE Conference : "Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave", 17-22 July 2022, Montr\'eal

Hi-5 is the L'-band (3.5-4.0 $\mu$m) high-contrast imager of Asgard, an instrument suite in preparation for the visitor focus of the VLTI. The system is optimized for high-contrast and high-sensitivity imaging within the diffraction limit of a single UT/AT telescope. It is designed as a double-Bracewell nulling instrument producing spectrally-dispersed (R=20, 400, or 2000) complementary nulling outputs and simultaneous photometric outputs for self-calibration purposes. In this paper, we present an update of the project with a particular focus on the overall architecture, opto-mechanical design of the warm and cold optics, injection system, and development of the photonic beam combiner. The key science projects are to survey (i) nearby young planetary systems near the snow line, where most giant planets are expected to be formed, and (ii) nearby main sequence stars near the habitable zone where exozodiacal dust that may hinder the detection of Earth-like planets. We present an update of the expected instrumental performance based on full end-to-end simulations using the new GRAVITY+ specifications of the VLTI and the latest planet formation models., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, SPIE 2022 "Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation" manuscript 12183-16

The authors would like to thank the researchers and engineers who are not coauthors of this paper but who have taken part and have brought their contribution to the proposed missions to ESA successive calls: NEAT (M3), micro-NEAT (S1), and Theia (M4 and M5). An extensive list of supporters for the science objectives is given in [17]. We thank also Arianna Gallo for her contribution in our investigation of the shape of the MilkyWay dark matter halo and Krzysztof A. Rybicki who generated the plots from Fig. 14. We are grateful to the anonymous referee who helped to improve the quality of the paper with his/her remarks. Concerning the funding of our work, we would like to acknowledge the support of many agencies or programs. R.B. acknowledges support from NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory lead team under cooperative agreements NNA13AA93A. A.C.M.C. acknowledges support from CFisUC strategic project (UID/FIS/04564/2019). F.C. acknowledges support by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (COSMICLENS: grant agreement No. 787886). M.F. received support from Polish National Science Centre (NCN) under Grant No. 2017/26/D/ST9/00591. M.F. gratefully acknowledge the support of the Swedish National Space Agency (DNR 65/19, 174/18). D.H. thanks the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA/Rymdstyrelsen) for their support. A.M. thanks the Portugese Fundac¸ ˜ao para a Ciˆencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Strategic Programme UID/FIS/00099/2019 for CENTRA. P.S. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council under grant FT190100814. L.W. acknowledges support from the Polish NCN grants: Harmonia No. 2018/06M/ST9/00311 and Daina No. 2017/27/L/ST9/03221. The OATo team acknowledges partial funding by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) under contracts 2014-025-R.1.2015 and 2018-24-HH.0, and by a grant from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (ASTRA). A.C. and F.M. acknowledge support by the LabEx FOCUS ANR-11-LABX-0013. The work of C.J., X.L. and J.P. was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University (MICIU/FEDER, UE) through grants RTI2018-095076-B-C21, ESP2016-80079-C2-1-R, and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences University of Barcelona (ICCUB, Unidad de Excelencia ’Mar´ıa de Maeztu’) through grants MDM-2014-0369 and CEX2019-000918-M. A.K.-M., A.A., V.C., P.G., P.G., A.M.A., A.M., M.S. were supported by Fundac¸ ˜ao para a Ciˆencia e a Tecnologia, with grants reference UIDB/00099/ 2020 and SFRH/BSAB/142940/2018 (P.G. only). A.D. and L.O. also acknowledge partial support from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) under the Departments of Excellence grant L.232/2016, and from the INFN grant InDark. G.J.W. gratefully acknowledges support of an Emeritus Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust. EV is supported by Spanish grant PGC2018-101950-B-100. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. Open access funding provided by Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica within the CRUI-CARE Agreement., Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high astrometric accuracy is an ideal complement to current astrometric surveys and a unique tool for precision astrophysics. Such a space-based mission will push the frontier of precision astrometry from evidence of Earth-mass habitable worlds around the nearest stars, to distant Milky Way objects, and out to the Local Group of galaxies. As we enter the era of the JamesWebb Space Telescope and the new ground-based, adaptive-optics-enabled giant telescopes, by obtaining these high precision measurements on key objects that Gaia could not reach, a mission that focuses on high precision astrometry science can consolidate our theoretical understanding of the local Universe, enable extrapolation of physical processes to remote redshifts, and derive a much more consistent picture of cosmological evolution and the likely fate of our cosmos. Already several missions have been proposed to address the science case of faint objects in motion using high precision astrometry missions: NEAT proposed for the ESA M3 opportunity, micro-NEAT for the S1 opportunity, and Theia for the M4 and M5 opportunities. Additional new mission configurations adapted with technological innovations could be envisioned to pursue accurate measurements of these extremely small motions. The goal of this White Paper is to address the fundamental science questions that are at stake when we focus on the motions of faint sky objects and to briefly review instrumentation and mission profiles., NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory NNA13AA93A, CFisUC strategic project (UID/FIS/04564/2019), Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (COSMICLENS: grant agreement No. 787886), Polish National Science Centre (NCN) under Grant No. 2017/26/D/ST9/00591, Swedish National Space Agency (DNR 65/19, 174/18), Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA/Rymdstyrelsen), Portugese Fundacão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Strategic Programme UID/FIS/00099/2019 for CENTRA, Australian Research Council under grant FT190100814, Polish NCN grants: Harmonia No. 2018/06M/ST9/00311 and Daina No. 2017/27/L/ST9/03221, Italian Space Agency (ASI) under contracts 2014-025-R.1.2015 and 2018-24-HH.0, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (ASTRA), LabEx FOCUS ANR-11-LABX-0013, Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University (MICIU/FEDER, UE) through grants RTI2018-095076-B-C21, ESP2016-80079-C2-1-R, Institute of Cosmos Sciences University of Barcelona (ICCUB, Unidad de Excelencia ’Mar´ıa de Maeztu’) through grants MDM-2014-0369 and CEX2019-000918-M, Fundacão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, with grants reference UIDB/00099/ 2020 and SFRH/BSAB/142940/2018 (P.G. only), Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) under the Departments of Excellence grant L.232/2016, and from the INFN grant InDark, Emeritus Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust, Spanish grant PGC2018-101950-B-100, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica within the CRUI-CARE Agreement

We study the equilibrium of a three-dimensional solid having a uniform thickness $2 \varepsilon $ along a middle surface which satisfies the usual assumptions of shell theory. The solid is linearly elastic at small strains and is submitted to unilateral contact conditions with an obstacle on a part of its boundary. When $\varepsilon $ tends to zero, the three-dimensional domain tends to a two-dimensional one, so that the contact conditions pass from a part of the boundary to the interior of the domain. We restrict our attention to the so-called bending case, that is when the shell undergoes only inextensional deformations. As a major difference with the case of a shallow shell, we get in general a coupling between the three components of the displacement in the contact conditions. The work is closed by explicit examples showing the corresponding variation of the non-penetrability condition along the surface of the shell and by comments about the model and the remaining difficulties.

In this paper, we investigate the local and global bifurcation behaviors of an archetypal self-excited smooth and discontinuous oscillator driven by moving belt friction. The belt friction is described in the sense of Stribeck characteristic to formulate the mathematical model of the proposed system. For such a friction characteristic, the complicated bifurcation behaviors of the system are discussed. The bifurcation of the multiple sliding segments for this self-excited system is exhibited by analytically exploring the collision of tangent points. The Hopf bifurcation of this self-excited system with viscous damping is analyzed by making the examination of the eigenvalues at the steady state and discussing the stability of the limit cycles. The bifurcation diagrams and the corresponding phase portraits are depicted to demonstrate the complicated dynamical behaviors of double tangency bifurcation, the bifurcation of sliding homoclinic orbit to a saddle, subcritical Hopf bifurcation and grazing bifurcation for this system.

International audience; The buckling and the post buckling of a simple model involving both large deformations and elastic-plasticity are studied. Plasticity is described by the classical incremental constitutive law involving in particular non regularized transition between plastic loading and elastic unloading. The kinematics is chosen in order to take into account any rotation, however large, without having to resort to approximations or asymptotic expansions. The work focusses essentially on the specificity of the coupling between these two types of nonlinearity. At small strains the global behavior is correctly given by Hutchinson's simple model involving the same elastic-plastic constitutive law and linearized deformations. But at very large strains, the response notably differs from that of Hutchinson's model. Indeed plasticity seems to have no effect and the behavior is that of a system involving the same nonlinear deformations but with a constant modulus. From the point of view of bifurcation analysis this result is qualitatively interesting due to the fact that the elastic-plastic constitutive law can be regarded as a strong, or non-smooth, nonlinearity, whereas large deformations is a smooth, we could say weaker, non linearity, so that the result contradicts the intuition that the strongest non linearity should be associated with the strongest bifurcation effect. The analysis is carried out using two different geometrical nonlinearities.

In the pressure infiltration of metal matrix composites, molten metal is injected under external pressure into a porous preform of the reinforcing material. Equilibrium capillary parameters characterizing wetting for this process are summarized in plots of metal saturation versus applied pressure, also known as drainage curves. Such curves can be measured in our laboratory during a single experiment with an infiltration apparatus designed to track the rate of metal penetration into porous preforms under conditions characteristic of metal matrix composite processing (temperatures in excess of 1000 A degrees C and pressures in the order of 10 MPa). For such measurements to be valid, infiltration of the preform with molten metal must be mechanically quasi-static, i.e., the metal must flow at a rate sufficiently low for the metal pressure to be essentially uniform across the preform at all times. We examine this requirement quantitatively, using a finite-difference model that simulates the unsaturated unidirectional ingress of molten metal into a ceramic particle preform of finite width. We furthermore present improvements in the experimental apparatus developed in our laboratory to measure the entire drainage curve in a single experiment. We compare numerical results with new experimental data for the copper/alumina system to show (i) that pressurization rates sufficiently low for quasi-static infiltration can be produced with this apparatus, and (ii) that taking the relative permeability equal to the saturation yields better agreement with experiment than does the expression originally proposed by Brooks and Corey.

This paper, “Coronographie interferentielle pour la mission spatuale DARWIN: experience de validation en laboratoire," was presented as part of International Conference on Space Optics—ICSO 1997, held in Toulouse, France.

The DARWIN mission is a project of the European Space Agency that should allow around 2012 the search for extrasolar planets and a spectral analysis of their potential atmosphere in order to evidence gases and particularly tracers of life. The principle of the instrument is based on the Bracewell nulling interferometer. It allows high angular resolution and high dynamic range. However, this concept, proposed more than 20 years ago, has never been experimentally demonstrated in the thermal infrared with high levels of extinction. We present here a laboratory monochromatic experiment dedicated to this goal. A theoretical and numerical approach of the question highlights a strong difficulty: the need for very clean and homogeneous wavefronts, in terms of intensity, phase and polarisation distribution. A classical interferometric approach appears to be insufficient to reach our goals. We have shown theoretically then numerically that this difficulty can be surpassed if we perform an optical filtering of the interfering beams. This technique allows us to decrease strongly the optical requirements and to view very high interferometric contrast measurements with commercial optical pieces. We present here a laboratory interferometer working at 10,6 microns, and implementing several techniques of optical filtering (pinholes and single-mode waveguides), its realisation, and its first promising results. We particularly present measurements that exhibit stable visibility levels better than 99,9% that is to say extinction levels better than 1000.

In this paper, we investigate the equilibrium stability of a Filippov-type system having multiple stick regions based upon a smooth and discontinuous (SD) oscillator with dry friction. The sets of equilibrium states of the system are analyzed together with Coulomb friction conditions in both $$(f_{\mathrm{n}}, f_{\mathrm{s}})$$ and $$(x, {\dot{x}})$$ planes. In the stability analysis, Lyapunov functions are constructed to derive the instability for the equilibrium set of the hyperbolic type and LaSalle’s invariance principle is employed to obtain the stability of the non-hyperbolic type. Analysis demonstrates the existence of a thick stable manifold and the interior stability of the hyperbolic equilibrium set due to the attractive sliding mode of the Filippov property, and also shows that the unstable manifolds of the hyperbolic-type are that of the endpoints with their saddle property. Numerical calculations show a good agreement with the theoretical analysis and an excellent efficiency of the approach for equilibrium states in this particular Filippov system. Furthermore, the equilibrium bifurcations are presented to demonstrate the transition between the smooth and the discontinuous regimes.

This work probes the influence of wetting on pressure infiltration. Pressure/saturation curves for the infiltration of packed F1000 angular alumina particle preforms by liquid Cu-Al and Sn-Al alloys are measured using an instrumented high-temperature pressure infiltration apparatus. These are ceramic metal systems in which the contact angle is documented to vary significantly with alloying, from non-wetting to wetting conditions. We show that adding Al to Sn or to Cu modifies the early percolation-dominated phases of infiltration and also the later, pore geometry dominated, phase of the infiltration process. Changes in contact angle brought by alloying cause the saturation/pressure curves to shift, yet for all systems of this work the curves remain entirely in the range of positive pressures, despite a transition to contact angles below 90. Combining measured pressures for infiltration at fixed saturation with relevant sessile drop experiment data from the literature shows that for, the range of conditions explored here, the infiltration pressures required are proportional, not to the work of immersion, but to a linear function thereof. This result agrees qualitatively with prior work in the literature on the infiltration of non-metallic liquids in porous media, and provides a master curve by means of which saturation curves and sessile drop data can be reconciled for this particular packed ceramic particle preform. (C) 2015 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Theia mission, as a natural successor to Gaia, will be the first extremely-high-precision astrometric surveyor that may emerge from the last ESA M5 call in October 2016. A major objective of Theia in the context of this conference is the detection by astrometry of Earths and Super-Earths exoplanets in the habitable zone of nearby A to M stars. This can be done by astrometry from space if a motion of

The wetting of angular alumina particle preforms by Cu-Sn alloys is investigated by means of pressure infiltration experiments conducted at 1150 A degrees C, using a system enabling dynamic and precise measurements of the metal volume injected into the preform. Wetting is quantified in terms of drainage curves, which plot the volume fraction of molten metal in the packed powder preform (also called saturation) versus the applied pressure. The shape of the curves confirms earlier findings, namely (i) the initial stage of infiltration is dominated by percolation and obeys a universal scaling relation while the metal shape is fractal; and (ii) at higher saturation, incremental pore-filling is dictated by local pore geometrical characteristics, saturation curves obeying then the Brooks-Corey correlation. According to sessile drop data in the literature, the Cu-Sn system is characterized by relatively small changes in the contact angle with alloy composition (128A degrees-122A degrees), while the metal surface tension changes by more than a factor two over the whole composition range. One would, therefore, expect that the drainage curves be indifferently proportional to the molten metal surface tension or the work of immersion: the present data show that this is indeed verified.