The Kaiser Spring Lectures 2025 - Modern Optics

To attend the lecture, be sure to get your ticket here!

Each year, the Kaiser Spring Lectures take place at the Old Observatory in Leiden. The lectures are aimed at the general public. This year the theme of the lectures is "Cosmic Connections: Bridging the Sciences of the Universe".

The fifth and last lecture in the series is titled "How photonics and sub-wavelength optics are shaping next-generation telescopes".

The upcoming era of extremely large optical telescopes will require advanced instruments to fully use their capabilities. These technological advancements are needed to not only enhance the telescopes but also to tackle big challenges in astronomy, like searching for life on Earth-like planets and dealing with Earth’s atmosphere. In this talk, from the perspective of a student, Dhwanil Patel will present these challenges and discuss how modern optics, such as subwavelength optics and photonics, are used to bridge these gaps. We will then explore some of the on-sky and planned instruments based on these principles and conclude the talk with a brief discussion of some of his work.