Kick-off meeting

Machining metre-sized gratings with nanometre accuracy

Award from EPSRC

• Total: £0.9M over 3 years
  • 20% JSY
  • 25% EBS
  • 25% XS
  • 100% New PDRA
  • DFB/CAH PI time
  • £140k hardware
• Funding start: July August 2021

Silicon gratings

Concept

Magnetically-levitated "head"

On-head laser metrology

Measuring grating performance

Project challenges

• We are doing lots of other projects (MROI, HARPS, MOONS, HIRES)
• Big step up in servo complexity (MIMO vs SISO)
• Long-term accuracy is as important as short-term jitter

Timeline from proposal

Next steps

• Start postdoc hire
• Contact external partners (Fraunhofer, industrial partners)
• Start concept design
  • Brainstorming on technical issues
    • In-person?
    • How often?