Thought I'd tease a bit of the recent findings from the optics team:
Earliest proof of concept:
takeaway... not good but the photons do get there... and I learned a lot.
Knowing where the trouble comes from (and rethinking many other tangentially important elements) gets us this:
these are not the same scale (btw) what we care about is the evenness of the light and of the image. The low value (or more precisely intensity) yellow smear is easily corrected (nearly a column above.) The cell size can now drop to about 1/5 the original intended size. I've not tiled it as a hexagon (an even better fit if you hope to grab circular images with fewer wasted margins. ) Hexagons should fit even better on parent wafers... quick estimate 500 per 156mm pseudo square... that is a tiny bit of Silicon serving a very large aperture.
I am trying to characterize the packing factor (how much margin is lost by the space between cells). Or in my case the space between individual mirror "wells." It is better for the heat (.95 or so) than for the PV but if those smears above get into the center they might scavenge us up to 92 or so. Which would add aperture-efficiency to our list of accomplishments.
Stay tuned!
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