Felix Widmann

PhD Student

Optimizing the GRAVITY interferometer for the observation of faint objects and improving radial velocity measurements of galactic center stars

Interferometry -- Wavefront Sensing -- Spectroscopy

Current Research Summary:

I am a PhD student at the MPE, where I am part of the Infrared and Submillimeter Group. My work is focusing on the GRAVITY interferometer at the VLTI in Chile. I work on increasing the sensitivity limit as well as understanding the effects and the propagation of polarization in GRAVITY and in the VLTI in general. This work is a mixture of on-site experiments, data analysis, and simulations. Additionally I work with data from the integral field spectrograph SINFONI at the VLTI. I focus on observations of the stars closest to the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. By measuring precise radial velocities of those stars we can test the effects of general relativity in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole.

Prior Research:

Master: Optomechanical setup for FSO receiving terminal in GEO to OGS downlink. German Aerospace Center (DLR). 10/15 - 11/16.