Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) presents a key challenge for technology development in the coming years, requiring a >100× more stable system than \textit{JWST}. WaveDriver is a concept for a laser guide star spacecraft coupled to an adaptive optics (AO) system onboard HWO that would enable HWO to reach its picometer-level wavefront stability requirements while relaxing other HWO subsystem requirements. At LLNL and UCSC we are revisiting the concept initially proposed by Douglas et al.\ (2019). We present key results key initial results from the first phase of our project, including (1) AO control developments, including with Linear Quadratic Gaussian control and machine learning, (2) AO wavefront sensor (WFS) trade study simulations, and (3) simulations of a photonic lantern natural guide star WFS. A key finding from our work is that WaveDriver could be needed to enable HWO's primary mirror segment stability and/or low order wavefront stability requirements.
@article{arxiv.2605.18723,
title = {WaveDriver: a Laser Guide Star AO System for HWO},
author = {Benjamin L. Gerard and Alex Geringer-Sameth and Aditya R. Sengupta and Alexx Perloff and Dominic F. Sanchez and Peter Waswa and Cesar Laguna and Rebecca Jensen-Clem and Lisa Poyneer and Megan Eckart},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.18723},
year = {2026}
}