Lasercoms: Is Adaptive Optics a Key player to High Data Rate and Reliable Optical Ground Stations?

Dr Laurent de Forges de Parny is Quantum System Engineer at Thales Alenia Space in Toulouse, PhD in Theoretical Physics, working on projects related to space-based quantum information and quantum cryptography since 2020.

His work involves system architecture of new satellite systems for quantum communications, developing and structuring his team, bid manager for ESA, CNES and EC programs and advising students on quantum communications.

Laurent is also Expert for the European Commission since 2017.

● Email address: laurent.de-forges-de-parny@thalesaleniaspace.com

Dr. Baris I. Erkmen has been active in the development of advanced optical communication systems for two decades. He is presently CTO at Aalyria Technologies, driving the development of lasercom technology for land, air, maritime, and space.

Before joining Aalyria, Baris was the CEO of Hedron Space (2022-2023), developing an optical data-relay network for Earth-observation satellites. His past responsibilities include Engineering Director of Project Taara at X (2017-2022), where he developed a high-performance wireless optical communication product for terrestrial broadband networks that has been deployed in hundreds of locations around the world to date. Prior to that he was the Engineering Lead for Project Loon’s Free-Space Optical Communications team (2013-2016), where he developed laser communication technology for a stratospheric platform and demonstrated it over thousands of km's of flights. Baris has also been the Principal Investigator for NASA’s OPALS laser communication mission (2009-2013), which successfully demonstrated optical downlinks from the International Space Station to Earth. In 2022, Baris was elected Fellow of Optica for contributions to the advancement of wireless optical communication systems.

Baris’s interests encompass the application of both classical and quantum properties of light to enhance communication and sensing capabilities for terrestrial, airborne, and spaceborne systems.

● Email address: baris@aalyria.com

Olga Razskazovskaya (Olga Raz), PhD, is a Technical Director for Optics at Optica’s Corporate Engagement Department. Olga has 13+ years of accumulated experience in the field of Optics and Photonics and has both, academic and industry, experience in the development and deployment of ultrafast laser systems and optical components for advanced scientific and industrial applications including fluorescent microscopy, X-ray generation, attosecond science, spectroscopy and imaging. Olga graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics from Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany in 2017 where she worked on the development of ultrafast infrared laser systems for the investigation of semiconductor materials. After postdoctoral work at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland Olga joined the industry and has continued her work in the design and implementation of optical components and ultrafast laser as a sales & development engineer.

● E-mail address: orazskazovskaya@optica.org