The very large telescope (VLT) interferometer (VLTI) in its current operating state is equipped with high-order adaptive optics (MACAO) working in the visible spectrum. A low-order near-infrared wavefront sensor (IRIS) is available to measure non-common path tilt aberrations downstream the high-order deformable mirror. For the next generation of VLTI instrumentation, in particular for the designated GRAVITY instrument, we have examined various designs of a four channel high-order near-infrared wavefront sensor. Particular objectives of our study were the specification of the near-infrared detector in combination with a standard wavefront sensing system. In this paper we present the preliminary design of a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor operating in the near-infrared wavelength range, which is capable of measuring the wavefronts of four telescopes simultaneously. We further present results of our design study, which aimed at providing a first instrumental concept for GRAVITY.
@article{arxiv.0808.1637,
title = {Near-infrared wavefront sensing for the VLT interferometer},
author = {Stefan Hippler and Wolfgang Brandner and Yann Clénet and Felix Hormuth and Eric Gendron and Thomas Henning and Ralf Klein and Rainer Lenzen and Daniel Meschke and Vianak Naranjo and Udo Neumann and José Ricardo Ramos and Ralf-Rainer Rohloff and Frank Eisenhauer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0808.1637},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
10 pages, 7 figures, to appear in "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II" SPIE conference, Marseille, 23-28 June 2008