Sky coverage modeling for the whole sky for laser guide star multiconjugate adaptive optics

Laser guide stars (LGSs) have been deployed for the last 20-30 years in ground-based astronomical telescopes to overcome the limited sky coverage of classical adaptive optics (AO) systems. Unfortunately, slow altitude drifts of the sodium layer compromise focus measurements, generating the so-called slow focus error, and, consequently, a natural guide star (NGS) is needed to compensate that error. The Keck I telescope AO system uses a 20x20 Shack-Hartmann (SH) wavefront sensor (WFS) for slow focus tracking (with a 5x5 mode used on fainter stars). This approach is far from optimal due to limited sky coverage, since the available NGSs are usually very faint. Our goal is to develop a different technique for slow focus tracking and make it fully operational using focal plane wavefront sensing (FPWFS), which can significantly increase sky coverage and allow slow focus tracking at higher frequencies, reducing the lag error. The Keck I near-infrared (NIR) tip-tilt sensor, known as TRICK, is used to obtain the focal plane images without any hardware modifications being necessary. We develop, characterize, and compare three different FPWFS algorithms, namely Gerchberg-Saxton (GS), linearized focal plane technique (LiFT), and Gaussian fit (Gf). These algorithms are studied for the specific purpose of slow focus sensing in the NIR (H and K bands) using numerical simulations and data collected at Keck in 2025 (bench and on-sky). The three algorithms were studied and characterized against different criteria such as linearity, computational costs, and resistance to low signal-to-noise ratio and/or residuals. From the results obtained, the main candidate for an on-sky deployment was GS, for which the main deciding factor was its higher stability and robustness under the presence of residuals. For that reason, on-sky tests in closed loop were made with GS. On-sky tests showed promising results, with GS successfully compensating for purposely introduced focus errors, even under the presence of high turbulence conditions. These tests represent an important step toward the full operationalization of this tool, expected in the coming months. This work can also be extrapolated to other existing 8-10 m class telescopes, or even future 30-40 m class telescopes, where the use of FPWFS can significantly improve sky coverage and reduce the lag error.

A sky coverage model for laser guide star adaptive optics systems is proposed. The atmosphere is considered to consist of a finite number of phase screens, which are defined by Zernike basis polynomials, located at different altitudes. These phase screens are transformed to the aperture plane, where they are converted to laser and natural guide star wavefront sensing measurements. These transformations incorporate the cone effect due to guide stars at finite heights, anisoplanatism due to guide stars off axis with respect to the science object, and adaptive optics systems with multiple guide stars. The wavefront error is calculated tomographically with minimum variance estimators derived from the transformation matrices and the known statistical properties of the atmosphere. This sky coverage model provides fast Monte Carlo simulations over random natural guide star configurations, irrespective of telescope diameter. The Monte Carlo simulations outlined show that inclusion of a finite outer scale for the atmosphere significantly reduces the median wavefront error, that increasing the number of laser guide stars in the asterism reduces the median wavefront error, and that a larger natural guide star patrol field provides a smaller median wavefront error when there is a low star density in the field.

Mellin transform techniques are applied to evaluate the covariance of the integrated turbulence-induced phase distortions along a pair of ray paths through the atmosphere from two points in a telescope aperture to a pair of sources at finite or infinite range. The derivation is for the case of a finite outer scale and a von Karman turbulence spectrum. The Taylor hypothesis is assumed if the two phase distortions are evaluated at two different times and amplitude scintillation effects are neglected. The resulting formula for the covariance is a power series in one variable for the case of a fixed atmospheric wind velocity profile and a power series in two variables for a fixed wind-speed profile with a random and uniformly distributed wind direction. These formulas are computationally efficient and can be easily integrated into computer codes for the numerical evaluation of adaptive optics system performance. Sample numerical results are presented to illustrate the effect of a finite outer scale on the performance of natural and laser guide star adaptive optics systems for an 8-m astronomical telescope. A hypothetical outer scale of 10 m significantly reduces the magnitude of tilt anisoplanatism, thereby improving the performance of a laser guide star adaptive optics system if the auxiliary natural star used for full-aperture tip/tilt sensing is offset from the science field. The reduction in higher-order anisoplanatism that is due to a 10-m outer scale is smaller, and the off-axis performance of a natural guide star adaptive optics system is not significantly improved.

We present the results of the laboratory characterization of the ARGOS LGS wavefront sensor (LGSW) and dichroic units. ARGOS is the laser guide star adaptive optics system of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). It implements a Ground Layer Adaptive Optics (GLAO) correction for LUCI, an infrared imager and multi-object spectrograph (MOS), using 3 pulsed Rayleigh beacons focused at 12km altitude. The LGSW is a Shack-Hartman sensor having 15 × 15 subaspertures over the telescope pupil. Each LGS is independently stabilized for on-sky jitter and gated to reduce spot elongation. The 3 LGS pupils are stabilized to compensate mechanical flexure and are arranged on a single detector. Two units of LGSW have been produced and tested at Arcetri Observatory. We report on the results obtained in the pre-shipment laboratory test: internal active flexure compensation loop performance, optomechanical stability under different gravity conditions, thermal cycling, Pockels cells performance. We also update on the upcoming installation and commissioning campaign at LBT.

The Subaru laser guide star adaptive optics (AO) system was installed at the Nasmyth focus of the Subaru Telescope, and had the first light with natural guide star on October 2006. The AO system has a 188-element curvature based wavefront sensor with photon-counting avalanche photodiode (APD) modules. It measures high-order terms of wavefront using either of a single laser (LGS) or natural guide star (NGS) within a 2' diameter field. The AO system has also a source simulator. It simulates LGS and NGS beams, simultaneously, with and without atmospheric turbulence by two turbulent layer at about 0 and 6 km altitudes, and reproduces the cone effect for the LGS beam. We describe the design, construction, and integration of the curvature wavefront sensor and calibration source unit.

The OpenSE Cookbook is an open-sourced collection of patterns, procedures, and best practices targeted for systems engineers who seek guidance on applying model-based and executable systems engineering (MBSE) using SysML. Its content has emerged from the system level modeling effort on the European Framework Program 6 (FP6) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The TMT MBSE approach applied the Executable Systems Engineering Method (ESEM) and the open-source Engineering Environment (OpenMBEE) to specify, analyze, and verify requirements of TMT’s Alignment and Phasing System (APS) and the Narrow Field Infrared Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS). In these applications, implicit dependencies are made explicit in a formal model through the use of ESEM, OpenMBEE, and SysML modeling constructs. The value proposition for applying this MBSE approach was to establish precise requirements and fine-grained traceability to system designs, and to verify key requirements beginning early in development. The integration of ESEM and the OpenMBEE tooling infrastructure (providing linked-data and web-operability) is a significant added value for the MBSE approach. The APS is responsible for the overall pre-adaptive optics wavefront quality, using starlight to measure wavefront errors and align the TMT optics. In the formally integrated and executable SysML model, simulations are performed to analyze the impact of changed requirements and verify specified constraints for various operational scenarios. The APS team used several modeling patterns to capture information such as the requirements, the operational scenarios, involved subsystems and their interaction points, the estimated or required time durations, and the mass and power consumption. Adaptive optics systems are designed to sense real-time atmospheric turbulence and correct the telescope’s optical beam to remove its effect. The system model for the adaptive optics operational modes was developed to capture sequence behaviors and operational scenarios to run Monte-Carlo simulations for verifying acquisition time, observing efficiency, and operational behavior requirements. The model is particularly useful for investigating the effect of parallelization, identifying interface issues, and re-ordering sequence acquisition tasks. A former version of the Cookbook (which is now updated to MBSE challenges, goals, and lessons learned) included modeling guidelines and conventions for all system aspects, hierarchy levels, and views, which were developed during for the Active Phasing Experiment (APE), an opto-mechatronical system technology demonstrator for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The Cookbook utilizes the above mentioned system models as real-world case-studies to demonstrate and document the applications of the recipes, providing also instructional examples and addressing the available tooling support. The Cookbook is accompanied by a number of SysML models and aodel libraries which facilitate model authoring and maintenance. The Cookbook covers the different aspects of Systems Engineering such as management of Requirements, Design (behavior and structure), Interfaces, Interdisciplinary Integration, Analysis, Trade Studies, and Technical Resources. This paper presents the background, motivation, architecture, and highlights some key content of the Cookbook. For example, interface management, error budget management, requirements verification, Monte Carlo driven analysis, and timing analysis of operational scenarios. The paper discusses how the capabilities of OpenMBEE contributed significantly to the adoption of executable systems engineering.

Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics (LGSAO) systems require an optical relay to produce images of both the telescope focal surface, and of laser guide stars. Laser guide stars imaged by the telescope lie at a range of axial distances from the telescope focal surface. Further, such relays are required to produce sharp metapupils and exit pupil. “Absolute Instruments” are optical systems which provide an image of the entire 3-dimensional object-space of the system that is free of distortion, curvature and point-blurring aberrations. Such systems are well-matched to the requirements of LGSAO systems. In this paper it will be shown that such systems can provide excellent image quality for the science field as well as for any practical range of LGS objects. Further, by splitting the correcting plate that transforms an ordinary relay into an absolute instrument, simultaneous near-perfect correction of metapupils and exit pupil can be achieved with no compromise to the relays’ imaging properties.

We present an overview of the design of IRIS, an infrared (0.84 - 2.4 micron) integral field spectrograph and imaging camera for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). With extremely low wavefront error (<30 nm) and on-board wavefront sensors, IRIS will take advantage of the high angular resolution of the narrow field infrared adaptive optics system (NFIRAOS) to dissect the sky at the diffraction limit of the 30-meter aperture. With a primary spectral resolution of 4000 and spatial sampling starting at 4 milliarcseconds, the instrument will create an unparalleled ability to explore high redshift galaxies, the Galactic center, star forming regions and virtually any astrophysical object. This paper summarizes the entire design and basic capabilities. Among the design innovations is the combination of lenslet and slicer integral field units, new 4Kx4k detectors, extremely precise atmospheric dispersion correction, infrared wavefront sensors, and a very large vacuum cryogenic system.

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.

We present our plans for a second-generation laser guide star adaptive optics system for the 3-meter Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory. The Shane hosted the first groundbreaking experiments in sodium laser guidestar adaptive optics, with observations starting in 1996, and provides for regular astronomical science observing to this day. The replacement new generation system will incorporate many of the recent advancements in AO technology and lessons learned from laboratory and on-sky experiments in order to provide higher Strehl, higher sensitivity, and greater wavelength coverage for astronomers. The proposed system uses a 32x32 actuator MEMS deformable mirror, along with higher sensitivity wavefront sensor, and a new fiber laser developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Our experiences from the Villages project, reported at earlier Photonics West meetings, provide much of the basis for the new system design.

ABSTRACTThe Keck Observatory began science observations with a laser guide star adaptive optics system, the first such system on an 8–10 m class telescope, in late 2004. This new capability greatly extends the scientific potential of the Keck II Telescope, allowing near–diffraction‐limited observations in the near‐infrared using natural guide stars as faint as 19th magnitude. This paper describes the conceptual approach and technical implementation followed for this system, including lessons learned, and provides an overview of the early science capabilities.

As a natural consequence of galaxy mergers, binary active galactic nuclei (AGNs) should be commonplace. Nevertheless, observational confirmations are rare, especially for binaries with separations less than ten kpc. Such a system may show two sets of narrow emission lines in a single spectrum owing to the orbital motion of the binary. We have obtained high-resolution near-infrared images of 50 double-peaked [O III] 5007 AGNs with the Keck II laser guide star adaptive optics system. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey sample is compiled from the literature and consists of 17 type-1 AGNs between 0.18 < z < 0.56 and 33 type-2 AGNs between 0.03 < z < 0.24. The new images reveal eight type-1 and eight type-2 sources that are apparently undergoing mergers. These are strong candidates of kpc-scale binary AGNs, because they show multiple components separated between 0.6 and 12 kpc and often disturbed morphologies. Because most of the type-1s are at higher redshifts than the type-2s, the higher merger fraction of type-1s (47+/-20%) compared to that of type-2s (24+/-10%) can be attributed to the general evolution of galaxy merger fraction with redshift. Furthermore, we show that AGN mergers are outliers of the M_BH-sigma relation because of over-estimated stellar velocity dispersions, illustrating the importance of removing mergers from the samples defining the M_BH-sigma relations. Finally, we find that the emission-line properties are indistinguishable for spatially resolved and unresolved sources, emphasizing that scenarios involving a single AGN can produce the same double-peaked line profiles and they account for at least 70% of the double-peaked [O III] AGNs.

We have obtained high spatial resolution Keck OSIRIS integral field\nspectroscopy of four z~1.5 ultra-luminous infrared galaxies that exhibit broad\nH-alpha emission lines indicative of strong AGN activity. The observations were\nmade with the Keck laser guide star adaptive optics system giving a spatial\nresolution of 0.1", or &lt;1 kpc at these redshifts. These high spatial resolution\nobservations help to spatially separate the extended narrow-line regions ---\npossibly powered by star formation --- from the nuclear regions, which may be\npowered by both star formation and AGN activity. There is no evidence for\nextended, rotating gas disks in these four galaxies. Assuming dust correction\nfactors as high as A(H-alpha)=4.8 mag, the observations suggest lower limits on\nthe black hole masses of (1 - 9) x 10^8 solar masses, and star formation rates\n&lt;100 solar masses per year. The black hole masses and star formation rates of\nthe sample galaxies appear low in comparison to other high-z galaxies with\nsimilar host luminosities. We explore possible explanations for these\nobservations including, host galaxy fading, black hole growth, and the shut\ndown of star formation.\n

Hardware and software specialized for real time control reduce the timing jitter of executables when compared to off-the-shelf hardware and software. However, these specialized environments are costly in both money and development time. While conventional systems have a cost advantage, the jitter in these systems is much larger and potentially problematic. This study analyzes the timing characterstics of a standard Dell server running a fully featured Linux operating system to determine if such a system would be capable of meeting the timing requirements for closed loop operations. Investigations are preformed on the effectiveness of tools designed to make off-the-shelf system performance closer to specialized real time systems. The Gnu Compiler Collection (gcc) is compared to the Intel C Compiler (icc), compiler optimizations are investigated, and real-time extensions to Linux are evaluated.

In order to achieve high sky coverage with natural guide star adaptive optics systems, the reference stars need to be chosen over a large field of view. But the size of the optical beam can become unmanageably large in current and planned future giant telescopes. This can render the optics unaffordable. To solve this issue, we have adopted two approaches - multiple fields of view and star-enlargers - for the LINC-NIRVANA layer-oriented, multiple-conjugated adaptive optics system. In this paper, we compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of various optical configurations for wide-field, natural guide star acquisition on current 8-meter and future 25-40 meter extremely large telescopes.