Related papers: Keck Primary Mirror Closed-Loop Segment Control us…
To reach the full potential of the new generation of ground based telescopes, an extremely fine adjustment of the phase is required. Wavefront control and correction before detection has therefore become one of the cornerstones of…
Strong turbulence conditions create amplitude aberrations through the effects of near-field diffraction. When integrated over long optical path lengths, amplitude aberrations (seen as scintillation) can nullify local areas in the recorded…
This article describes the implementation of a focal plane based wavefront control loop on the high-contrast imaging instrument SCExAO (Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics). The sensor relies on the Fourier analysis of conventional…
We investigate the focal plane wavefront sensing technique, known as Phase Diversity, at the scientific focal plane of a segmented mirror telescope with an adaptive optics (AO) system. We specifically consider an optical system imaging a…
Commonly used wavefront sensors, the Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor and the pyramid wavefront sensor, for example, have large dynamic range or high sensitivity, trading one regime for the other. A new type of wavefront sensor is being…
Context. Solar wavefront sensing has been a challenge for astrophysical instrumentalists, due to the low contrast between the Sun and the sky background compared to night-time observations, which limits the performance of adaptive optics…
We propose and apply two methods to estimate pupil plane phase discontinuities for two realistic scenarios on VLT and Keck. The methods use both Phase Diversity and a form of image sharpening. For the case of VLT, we simulate the `low wind…
The next generation of Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMT) will have large gaps between the segments either caused by the shadow of the mechanical structure of the secondary mirror (E-ELT and TMT) or intrinsically by design (GMT).…
Context: Ground-based telescopes are susceptible to seeing, an atmospheric phenomenon that reduces the resolving power of large observatories to that of a home telescope. Compensating these effects is therefore critical to realizing the…
Continuous wavefront sensing on future space telescopes allows relaxation of stability requirements while still allowing on-orbit diffraction-limited optical performance. We consider the suitability of phase retrieval to continuously…
Precision wavefront control on future segmented-aperture space telescopes presents significant challenges, particularly in the context of high-contrast exoplanet direct imaging. We present a new wavefront control architecture that…
The James Webb Space Telescope is orders of magnitude more sensitive than any other facility across the near to mid-infrared wavelengths. Many approved programs take advantage of its highly stable point spread function (PSF) to directly…
Focal plane wavefront sensing and control is a critical approach to reducing non-common path errors between the a conventional astronomical adaptive optics (AO) wavefront sensor (WFS) detector and science camera. However, in addition to…
Optical distortions can significantly deteriorate the measurement accuracy in imaging systems. Such distortions can occur at fluctuating phase boundaries as well as multiple-phase flows and result from the accompanied refractive index…
Several types of Wavefront Sensors (WFS) are nowadays available in the field of Adaptive Optics (AO). Generally speaking, their basic principle consists in measuring slopes or curvatures of Wavefront Errors (WFE) transmitted by a telescope,…
A crucial component of the high-contrast instrumental chain in astronomy is the wavefront sensor (WFS). A key property of this component is its sensitivities, which reflect its ability to efficiently use incoming photons to encode the phase…
The use of Wavefront Sensors (WFS) is nowadays fundamental in the field of instrumental optics. This paper discusses the principle of an original and recently proposed new class of WFS. Their principle consists in evaluating the slopes of…
(abridged) Extreme adaptive optics (XAO) encounters severe difficulties to cope with the high speed (>1kHz), high accuracy and high order requirements for future extremely large telescopes. An innovative high order adaptive optics system…
Astronomical adaptive optics (AO) is a critical approach to enable ground-based diffraction-limited imaging and high contrast science, with the potential to enable habitable exoplanet imaging on future extremely large telescopes. However,…
Uncorrected wavefront errors create speckle noise in high-contrast observations at small inner-working angles. These speckles can be sensed and controlled by using coronagraph integrated wavefront sensors. Here, we will present how the…