Related papers: Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor sensitivity loss f…
Atmospheric turbulence degrades the quality of astronomical observations in ground-based telescopes, leading to distorted and blurry images. Adaptive Optics (AO) systems are designed to counteract these effects, using atmospheric…
Real-time seeing and outer scale estimation at the location of the focus of a telescope is fundamental for the adaptive optics systems dimensioning and performance prediction, as well as for the operational aspects of instruments. This…
We present numerical characterizations of the wavefront sensing performance for few-mode photonic lantern wavefront sensors (PLWFSs). These characterizations include calculations of throughput, control space, sensor linearity, and an…
Context. The new giant segmented mirror telescopes will use laser guide stars (LGS) for their adaptive optics (AO) systems. Two options to use as wavefront sensors (WFS) are the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SHWFS) and the pyramid…
The Zernike wavefront sensor (ZWFS) is a concept belonging to the wide class Fourier-filtering wavefront sensor (FFWFS). The ZWFS is known for its extremely high sensitivity while having a low dynamic range, which makes it a unique sensor…
Latency in the control loop of adaptive optics (AO) systems can severely limit performance. Under the frozen flow hypothesis linear predictive control techniques can overcome this, however identification and tracking of relevant turbulent…
The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wavefront chromaticity and scintillation on the point spread function (PSF) contrast achievable with ground based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wavefront sensing schemes. I show that…
Over the last few years increasing consideration has been given to the study of Laser Guide Stars (LGS) for the measurement of the disturbance introduced by the atmosphere in optical and near-infrared astronomical observations from the…
The capability of the adaptive optics to correct for the segmentation error is analyzed in terms of the residual wavefront RMS and the power spectral density of the phase. The analytical model and the end-to-end simulation give…
We present a simple measurement and analysis technique to determine the fraction of optical loss due to both radiation (scattering) and linear absorption in microphotonic components. The method is generally applicable to optical materials…
Context. The diffusion of adaptive optics systems in astronomical instrumentation for large ground-based telescopes is rapidly increasing and the pyramid wavefront sensor is replacing the Shack-Hartmann as the standard solution for single…
We present an experimental test of the use of stress engineered optics incorporated into a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor in such a way that the shape of the point spread function (PSF) provides polarization information while the…
Context: Telescopes like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be used together with extreme adaptive optics (AO) instruments to directly image Earth-like planets. The AO systems will need to…
The shape of a focus-modulated point spread function (PSF) is used as a quick visual assessment tool of aberration modes in the PSF. Further analysis in terms of shape moments can permit quantifying the modal coefficients with an accuracy…
The Thirty Meter Telescope will use a sophisticated adaptive optics system called NFIRAOS. This system utilizes two deformable mirrors conjugate to 0 km and 11.2 km to apply a Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) correction over a 2…
Many adaptive optics systems operate by measuring the distortion of the wavefront in one wavelength range and performing the scientific observations in a second, different wavelength range. One common technique is to measure wavefront…
The Zernike wavefront sensor (ZWFS) stands out as one of the most sensitive optical systems for measuring the phase of an incoming wavefront, reaching photon efficiencies close to the fundamental limit. This quality, combined with the fact…
Extremely Large Telescopes have overwhelmingly opted for the Pyramid wavefront sensor (PyWFS) over the more widely used Shack-Hartmann WaveFront Sensor (SHWFS) to perform their Single Conjugate Adaptive Optics (SCAO) mode. The PyWFS, a…
Adaptive optics (AO) systems using tomographic estimation of three-dimensional structure of atmospheric turbulence requires vertical atmospheric turbulence profile, which describes turbulence strength as a function of altitude as a prior…
Real-time seeing estimation at the focus of a telescope is nowadays strongly emphasized as this knowledge virtually drives the dimensioning of adaptive optics systems and instrument operational aspects. In this context we study the interest…