GravityCam: Wide-Field High-Resolution High-Cadence Imaging Surveys in
  the Visible from the Ground
  GravityCam is a new concept of ground-based imaging instrument capable of
delivering significantly sharper images from the ground than is normally
possible without adaptive optics. Advances in optical and near infrared imaging
technologies allow images to be acquired at high speed without significant
noise penalty. Aligning these images before they are combined can yield a 2.5
to 3 fold improvement in image resolution. By using arrays of such detectors,
survey fields may be as wide as the telescope optics allows. Consequently,
GravityCam enables both wide-field high-resolution imaging and high-speed
photometry. We describe the instrument and detail its application to provide
demographics of planets and satellites down to Lunar mass (or even below)
across the Milky Way. GravityCam is also suited to improve the quality of weak
shear studies of dark matter distribution in distant clusters of galaxies and
multiwavelength follow-ups of background sources that are strongly lensed by
galaxy clusters. The photometric data arising from an extensive microlensing
survey will also be useful for asteroseismology studies, while GravityCam can
be used to monitor fast multiwavelength flaring in accreting compact objects,
and promises to generate a unique data set on the population of the Kuiper belt
and possibly the Oort cloud.
