Detail Project and Funding

Abstract: The present proposal is intended to take the European Solar Telescope (EST) to the next level of development by
undertaking crucial activities to improve the performance of current state-of-the-art instrumentation. Legal, industrial and
socio-economic issues will also be addressed, as key questions for the attainment of EST. The particular developments and
strategic tasks proposed here can be summarised in the following specific objectives:
(i) Boosting new generation detectors, with the development of two prototype sensors, one for large-format imaging and a
the other for high-precision polarimetry, the evaluation of an existing large format wavefront sensing camera is also
addressed;
(ii) Development of a capacitance-stabilised Fabry-Perot prototype for a high quality control of the parallelism of the etalon
plates;
(iii) new techniques for 2D solar spectro-polarimetry; with integral field units based on multi-slit image slicers or a microlensfed
spectrograph;
(iv) development of large format liquid-crystal modulators, required for the large-format sensors that will be needed for the
new generation large aperture telescopes ;
(v) evaluation of the performance of the EST-MCAO deformable mirrors to improve the design and performance of this
system; and
(vi) strategic work to covering industrial, financial and legal issues related the future construction and operation of EST. The
following issues will be addressed:
• Elaboration of a census of the European solar physics community
• Analysis of the technological expertise of European companies in the different countries and their potential expertise
related with the construction needs of EST.
• Revision and update of the construction budget of EST
• Stimulation of a discussion of all these aspects within the consortium EAST
With all these elements in hand, the project will be in the condition to present a definite proposal for detailed design,
construction, managing and operation of EST.