A sharp future for the 3.6-m DOT? The power of adaptive optics for medium size telescopes

Adaptive optics (AO), by compensating in real time the blurring due to atmospheric turbulence, improves the angular resolution and the sensitivity of ground-based telescopes. AO represents an opportunity for medium size telescopes to be competitive with respect to large and very large observatories. AO can be beneficial for most scientific cases and – we think – reachable with a reasonable effort. In this contribution, we review the current state of adaptive optics in medium size telescopes, discuss promising avenues and present a possible science case for the DOT. In the second part, we present the relevant expertise we are currently building up in Lie`ge in the framework of the SALTO project, a 1-m telescope demonstrator with laser guided adaptive optics.