<title>Remote alignment of adaptive optical systems with far-field optimization</title>

An Adaptive Optic (AO) system is a fundamental requirement of 8m-class telescopes. We know that in order to obtain the maximum possible resolution allowed by these telescopes we need to correct the atmospheric turbulence. Thanks to adaptive optic systems we are able to use all the effective potential of these instruments, drawing all the information from the universe sources as best as possible. In an AO system there are two main components: the wavefront sensor (WFS) that is able to measure the aberrations on the incoming wavefront in the telescope, and the deformable mirror (DM) that is able to assume a shape opposite to the one measured by the sensor. The two subsystem are connected by the reconstructor (REC). In order to do this, the REC requires a “common language" between these two main AO components. It means that it needs a mapping between the sensor-space and the mirror-space, called an interaction matrix (IM). Therefore, in order to operate correctly, an AO system has a main requirement: the measure of an IM in order to obtain a calibration of the whole AO system. The IM measurement is a 'mile stone' for an AO system and must be done regardless of the telescope size or class. Usually, this calibration step is done adding to the telescope system an auxiliary artificial source of light (i.e a fiber) that illuminates both the deformable mirror and the sensor, permitting the calibration of the AO system. For large telescope (more than 8m, like Extremely Large Telescopes, ELTs) the fiber based IM measurement requires challenging optical setups that in some cases are also impractical to build. In these cases, new techniques to measure the IM are needed. In this PhD work we want to check the possibility of a different method of calibration that can be applied directly on sky, at the telescope, without any auxiliary source. Such a technique can be used to calibrate AO system on a telescope of any size. We want to test the new calibration technique, called “sinusoidal modulation technique”, on the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) AO system, which is already a complete AO system with the two main components: a secondary deformable mirror with by 672 actuators, and a pyramid wavefront sensor. My first phase of PhD work was helping to implement the WFS board (containing the pyramid sensor and all the auxiliary optical components) working both optical alignments and tests of some optical components. Thanks to the “solar tower” facility of the Astrophysical Observatory of Arcetri (Firenze), we have been able to reproduce an environment very similar to the telescope one, testing the main LBT AO components: the pyramid sensor and the secondary deformable mirror. Thanks to this the second phase of my PhD thesis: the measure of IM applying the sinusoidal modulation technique. At first we have measured the IM using a fiber auxiliary source to calibrate the system, without any kind of disturbance injected. After that, we have tried to use this calibration technique in order to measure the IM directly “on sky”, so adding an atmospheric disturbance to the AO system. The results obtained in this PhD work measuring the IM directly in the Arcetri solar tower system are crucial for the future development: the possibility of the acquisition of IM directly on sky means that we are able to calibrate an AO system also for extremely large telescope class where classic IM measurements technique are problematic and, sometimes, impossible. Finally we have not to forget the reason why we need this: the main aim is to observe the universe. Thanks to these new big class of telescopes and only using their full capabilities, we will be able to increase our knowledge of the universe objects observed, because we will be able to resolve more detailed characteristics, discovering, analyzing and understanding the behavior of the universe components.

It is well known that using two or more deformable mirrors (DMs) can improve the compensation ability of an adaptive optics (AO) system. However, to keep the stability of an AO system, the correlation between the multiple DMs must be suppressed during the correction. In this paper, we proposed a slope-based decoupling algorithm to simultaneous control the multiple DMs. In order to examine the validity and practicality of this algorithm, a typical woofer-tweeter (W-T) AO system was set up. For the W-T system, a theory model was simulated and the results indicated in theory that the algorithm we presented can selectively make woofer and tweeter correct different spatial frequency aberration and suppress the cross coupling between the dual DMs. At the same time, the experimental results for the W-T AO system were consistent with the results of the simulation, which demonstrated in practice that this algorithm is practical for the AO system with dual DMs.

A general approach is presented for evaluating and optimizing the degree of atmospheric turbulence compensation achieved by an adaptive optics system employed as part of a extended field-of-view astronomical telescope. This method applies to an adaptive optics system incorporating either one or multiple natural and/or laser guide stars sensed by wave-front slope sensors, a wave-front reconstruction algorithm equivalent to a matrix multiply, a servo control law to temporally filter the output of the wave-front reconstructor, and one or several deformable mirrors optically conjugate to different ranges along the telescope’s line-of-sight. The degree of atmospheric turbulence compensation achieved by such a configuration is evaluated in terms of the residual mean-square phase distortion and turbulence-induced optical transfer function at each point in the telescope’s field-of-view. This evaluation accounts for the combined, interacting effects of the atmospheric turbulence C n 2 ( h ) profile and wind velocity profile, wave-front sensor and deformable mirror fitting error, wave-front sensor noise, finite control system bandwidth, and the net anisoplanatism associated with a given constellation of natural and/or laser guide stars. Optimal wave-front reconstruction algorithms are derived which minimize the telescope’s field-of-view-averaged residual mean-square phase distortion. These evaluation and optimization results are first-order in the sense that they neglect diffraction effects and assume that all adaptive optics components are strictly linear. Results for the case of a finite servo bandwidth also require the wave-front reconstruction algorithm coefficients to satisfy a set of linear constraints; the reconstructor must precisely predict the deformable mirror actuator command vector in the absense of sensor noise and atmospheric turbulence. Numerical results are presented for a variety of adaptive optics configurations incorporating either a single guide star, multiple guide stars and a single deformable mirror, or multiple guide stars and two deformable mirrors.

Author Index to volume 202

A low cost adaptive optical system for improving solid-state laser beam quality has been set up. This system consists of a deformable mirror, a high voltage amplifier, a set of solid-state laser system, a CCD camera, a control software and corresponding optimization algorithm. This adaptive optical system doesn't employ a wave-front sensor to detect the phase information, but optimize the light intensity within a fixed aperture in the focal plane by a 19-element piezoelectricity deformable mirror. In order to find the optimum surface profile of the deformable mirror, which is applied to correct the phase aberrations in a solid-state laser system, a global genetic algorithm is introduced. The far-field light intensity signal, which is measured by a CCD camera, is used as a fitness function of the genetic algorithm. In this paper, the performance and efficiency of this wave-front sensor-less adaptive optical system based on the genetic algorithm are presented. Both the simulation results and the experimental results are given and discussed.

Nearly every new large-scale laser system application at LLNL has requirements for beam control which exceed the current level of available technology. For applications such as inertial confinement fusion, laser isotope separation, laser machining, and laser the ability to transport significant power to a target while maintaining good beam quality is critical. There are many ways that laser wavefront quality can be degraded. Thermal effects due to the interaction of high-power laser or pump light with the internal optical components or with the ambient gas are common causes of wavefront degradation. For many years, adaptive optics based on thing deformable glass mirrors with piezoelectric or electrostrictive actuators have be used to remove the low-order wavefront errors from high-power laser systems. These adaptive optics systems have successfully improved laser beam quality, but have also generally revealed additional high-spatial-frequency errors, both because the low-order errors have been reduced and because deformable mirrors have often introduced some high-spatial-frequency components due to manufacturing errors. Many current and emerging laser applications fall into the high-resolution category where there is an increased need for the correction of high spatial frequency aberrations which requires correctors with thousands of degrees of freedom. The largest Deformable Mirrors currently availablemore » have less than one thousand degrees of freedom at a cost of approximately $1M. A deformable mirror capable of meeting these high spatial resolution requirements would be cost prohibitive. Therefore a new approach using a different wavefront control technology is needed. One new wavefront control approach is the use of liquid-crystal (LC) spatial light modulator (SLM) technology for the controlling the phase of linearly polarized light. Current LC SLM technology provides high-spatial-resolution wavefront control, with hundreds of thousands of degrees of freedom, more than two orders of magnitude greater than the best Deformable Mirrors currently made. Even with the increased spatial resolution, the cost of these devices is nearly two orders of magnitude less than the cost of the largest deformable mirror.« less

Since atmosphere turbulence has an effect on laser propagation, it causes wavefront error usually , changes intensity and coherence of laser, disturbs detection of lidar. The adaptive optical system has broad application in the field of laser transmission because it can adjust characters of optical system ,detect and correct the wavefront error at the same time. Adaptive optics technology uses deformable mirrors to perform dynamic phase modulation and endow optical system the ability to decrease the influence of dynamic wavefront errors. In this paper ,a correction method of the micro-miniature adaptive optical system based on Micro Electromechanical System (MEMS) technology is proposed by analyzing the working theory of the adaptive optical system. An experimental system including deformable mirror based on Micro Electromechanical System (MEMS) technology is designed to correct a factitious wavefront error.The influence function and voltage-deflection curve are researched, and the voltage control matrix is educed. By using the voltage control , the static wavefront aberration is corrected. Several important capabilities of deformable mirrors is tested. With the voltage control matrix, the corrected capability of the adaptive optical system is achieved successfully .The experimental results show that the adaptive optical system can preferably correct the wavefront error, that has small volume and steady capability, and greatly improve the capability of lidar detection.

In addition to the BLINC/MIRAC IR science instruments, the Magellan adaptive secondary AO system will have an EEV CCD47 that can be used both for visible AO science and as a wide-field acquisition camera. The effects of atmospheric dispersion on the elongation of the diffraction limited Magellan adaptive optics system point spread function (PSF) are significant in the near IR. This elongation becomes particularly egregious at visible wavelengths, culminating in a PSF that is 2000&mgr;m long in one direction and diffraction limited (30-60 &mgr;m) in the other over the wavelength band 0.5-1.0&mgr;m for a source at 45° zenith angle. The planned Magellan AO system consists of a deformable secondary mirror with 585 actuators. This number of actuators should be sufficient to nyquist sample the atmospheric turbulence and correct images to the diffraction limit at wavelengths as short as 0.7&mgr;m, with useful science being possible as low as 0.5&mgr;m. In order to achieve diffraction limited performance over this broad band, 2000&mgr;m of lateral color must be corrected to better than 10&mgr;m. The traditional atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC) consists of two identical counter-rotating cemented doublet prisms that correct the primary chromatic aberration. We propose two new ADC designs: the first consisting of two identical counter-rotating prism triplets, and the second consisting of two pairs of cemented counter-rotating prism doublets that use both normal dispersion and anomalous dispersion glass in order to correct both primary and secondary chromatic aberration. The two designs perform 58% and 68%, respectively, better than the traditional two-doublet design. We also present our design for a custom removable wide-field lens that will allow our CCD47 to switch back and forth between an 8.6" FOV for AO science and a 25.8" FOV for acquisition.

In conventional Adaptive optics (AO) system, wavefront aberration is measured by wavefront sensor. However, a point source is usually not available in most imaging systems. Therefore development of deformable mirror control scheme in adaptive optics system based on vision information will extend the application area of AO technique. A focus measure (FM) is a measure of image quality and can be calculated from image data obtained from the image sensor. It can be used to find the optimal shape of the deformable mirror that compensates the wavefront aberration. In this paper, we analyze the performance of focus measures under different types of wavefront aberrations. The relation of FM vs. the aberration strength is analyzed systematically for different aberration modes and different FM functions. The FM performance under combination of aberrations is also investigated. This research supplies a guide for selection of the suitable FM function and strategy for control of deformable mirror in the AO system.

We address the problem of proper handling of deformable mirror (DM) dynamics in Adaptive Optical (AO) systems. We develop a state-space approach based on a continuous stochastic model of the atmospheric turbulence, which yields a fully optimal minimum mean-square error (mmse) solution in the form of a discrete-time Linear-Quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) regulator design. This optimal approach provides a reference point for assessing the performance of simpler suboptimal solutions used up to now. We show the significance of taking into account the DM dynamics, in particular for the upcoming secondary deformables.

In astronomy and microscopy, distortions in the wavefront affect the dynamic range of a high-contrast imaging system. These aberrations are either imposed by a turbulent medium such as the atmosphere, by static or thermal aberrations in the optical path, or by imperfectly phased subapertures in a segmented mirror. Active and adaptive optics (AO), consisting of a wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror, are employed to address this problem. Nevertheless, the non-common-path between the wavefront sensor and the science camera leads to persistent quasi-static speckles that are difficult to calibrate and which impose a floor on the image contrast. In this paper, we present the first experimental demonstration of a novel wavefront sensor requiring only a minor asymmetric obscuration of the pupil, using the science camera itself to detect high-order wavefront errors from the speckle pattern produced. We apply this to correct errors imposed on a deformable microelectromechanical segmented mirror in a closed loop, restoring a high-quality point spread function and residual wavefront errors of the order of ∼10 nm using 1600 nm light, from a starting point of ∼300 nm in piston and ∼0.3 mrad in tip–tilt. We recommend this as a method for measuring the non-common-path error in AO-equipped ground based telescopes, as well as an approach to phasing difficult segmented mirrors such as on the James Webb Space Telescope primary and as a future direction for extreme AO.

An adaptive optics system is designed and constructed to recover information from damaged optical media. The system is based on an Olympus IX70 microscope with custom illumination and detection. A scanning 408nm laser beam provides both the reference beam for the adaptive optics system and the data beam for imaging of data marks. A two-dimensional galvanometer system is used to scan the focused laser over the sample, and a precision z stage is used to change focus planes. The adaptive optics system is based on a Thorlabs AO kit with a Shack-Hartman wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror. A custom objective lens using a solid immersion lens is implemented that provides NA up to 1.5. Several types of data storage substrates are examined, including partial DVD and BD substrates, small 2cm-square pieces of DVD and BD substrates, and dust fragments on the order of 2mm in size. In order to view the dust fragments, they are collected on a microscope slide and melted to reflow the plastic and reveal data-containing flakes.

A new adaptive optics (AO) system for controlling the mode profile of a diode-laser-pumped Nd:YAG solid laser has been set up in our laboratory. A 19-element piezoelectric deformable mirror (DM), which is used as the rear mirror of the solid-state laser, is controlled by a genetic algorithm (GA). To improve the system convergence rate, the GA optimizes the first 10 orders of Zernike mode coefficients rather than optimize 19 voltages on the DM. The transform matrix between the 19 voltages and the first 10 orders of Zernike mode coefficients is deduced. Comparative numerical results show that the convergence speed and the correction performance of the AO system based on optimizing Zernike mode coefficients is far better than that of optimizing voltages. Moreover, experimental results showed that this AO system could change TEM(10), TEM(11), and TEM(20) transverse modes into a TEM(00) mode successfully.

When the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) achieves first light in 2019, it will deliver the highest spatial resolution images of the solar atmosphere ever recorded. Additionally, the DKIST will observe the Sun with unprecedented polarimetric sensitivity and spectral resolution, spurring a leap forward in our understanding of the physical processes occurring on the Sun. The DKIST wavefront correction system will provide active alignment control and jitter compensation for all six of the DKIST science instruments. Five of the instruments will also be fed by a conventional adaptive optics (AO) system, which corrects for high frequency jitter and atmospheric wavefront disturbances. The AO system is built around an extended-source correlating Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, a Physik Instrumente fast tip-tilt mirror (FTTM) and a Xinetics 1600-actuator deformable mirror (DM), which are controlled by an FPGA-based real-time system running at 1975 Hz. It is designed to achieve on-axis Strehl of 0.3 at 500 nm in median seeing (r₀ = 7 cm) and Strehl of 0.6 at 630 nm in excellent seeing (r₀ = 20 cm). The DKIST wavefront correction team has completed the design phase and is well into the fabrication phase. The FTTM and DM have both been delivered to the DKIST laboratory in Boulder, CO. The real-time controller has been completed and is able to read out the camera and deliver commands to the DM with a total latency of approximately 750 μs. All optics and optomechanics, including many high-precision custom optics, mounts, and stages, are completed or nearing the end of the fabrication process and will soon undergo rigorous acceptance testing. Before installing the wavefront correction system at the telescope, it will be assembled as a testbed in the laboratory. In the lab, performance tests beginning with component-level testing and continuing to full system testing will ensure that the wavefront correction system meets all performance requirements. Further work in the lab will focus on fine-tuning our alignment and calibration procedures so that installation and alignment on the summit will proceed as efficiently as possible.

We describe a closed-loop holographic laser adaptive optics system (HLAOS) based on a holographic wavefront sensor (HWFS) and 21-element continuous-surface piezoelectric deformable mirror (DM). The principle behind HWFSs is described, and then the response sensitivity and crosstalk effect on the lowest 12 Zernike modes of aberration are analyzed. Next, the wavefront-correction capability of the 21-element DM is analyzed. The closed-loop correction of the HLAOS to a static aberration is then numerically simulated. We report a practical implementation of the HLAOS and compare the aberration-compensation effect with a traditional adaptive optics system based on a 37-unit Shark-Hartmann sensor. The practically relevant parameters are analyzed and the experimental results show that an HLAOS using a piezoelectric DM can achieve a correction capability comparable to that of a traditional adaptive optics system.