Related papers: Towards understanding interactions between the AO …
Phase masks have numerous applications in astronomical optics, in particular related to two themes: coronography for detection and analysis of extrasolar planets or circumstellar disks, and wavefront analysis for extremely precise adaptive…
Wavefront sensing with a thin diffuser has emerged as a potential low-cost alternative to a lenslet array for aberrometry. Diffuser wavefront sensors (DWS) have previously relied on tracking speckle displacement and consequently require…
For segmented telescopes, achieving fine co-focus adjustment is essential for realizing co-phase adjustment and maintenance, which involves adjusting the millimeter-scale piston between segments to fall within the capture range of the…
Context. Adaptive optics (AO) is now a tool commonly deployed in astronomy. The real time correction of the atmospheric turbulence that AO enables allows telescopes to perform close to the diffraction limit at the core of their point spread…
Zernike polynomials are widely used to describe the wavefront phase as they are well suited to the circular geometry of various optical apertures. Non-conventional optical systems, such as future large optical telescopes with highly…
Exoplanet detection and characterization through extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) is a key science goal of future extremely large telescopes. This achievement, however, will be limited in sensitivity by both quasi-static wavefront errors and…
Non-common path quasi-static and differential aberrations are one of the big hurdles of direct imaging for current and future high-contrast imaging instruments. They increase speckle and photon noise thus reducing the achievable contrast…
The calibration of future wide field adaptive optics (WFAO) systems requires knowledge of the geometry of the system, in particular the alignment parameters between the sub-apertures of the wavefront sensors (WFS), pupil and deformable…
Differentiating between an exoplanet signal and residual speckle noise is a key challenge in high-contrast imaging. Speckles are due to a combination of fast, slow and static wavefront aberrations introduced by atmospheric turbulence and…
An important factor which affects performance of solar adaptive optics (AO) systems is the accuracy of tracking an extended object in the wavefront sensor. The accuracy of a centre-ofmass approach to image shift measurement depends on the…
Current designs for all three extremely large telescopes show the overwhelming adoption of the pyramid wavefront sensor (P-WFS) as the WFS of choice for adaptive optics (AO) systems sensing on natural guide stars (NGS) or extended objects.…
Dynamic wavefront aberrations negatively impact a wide range of optical applications including astronomy, optical free-space telecommunications and bio-imaging. Wavefront errors can be compensated by an adaptive optics system comprised of a…
We performed closed-loop lab testing of large-format deformable mirrors (DMs) with hybrid variable reluctance actuators. TNO has been developing the hybrid variable reluctance actuators in support for a new generation of adaptive secondary…
The nonlinear curvature wavefront sensor (nlCWFS) offers improved sensitivity for adaptive optics (AO) systems compared to existing wavefront sensors, such as the Shack-Hartmann. The nominal nlCWFS design uses a series of imaging planes…
Wavefront shaping (WFS) has emerged as powerful tool to control the propagation of diverse wave phenomena (light, sound, microwaves, ...) in disordered matter for applications including imaging, communication, energy transfer,…
The performance of high-contrast imaging instruments is limited by wavefront errors, in particular by non-common path aberrations (NCPAs). Focal-plane wavefront sensing (FPWFS) is appropriate to handle NCPAs because it measures the…
Metasurfaces have revolutionized compact wavefront control using planar, subwavelength structures. However, conventional meta-optical devices predominantly operate within a far-field paradigm, assuming electromagnetic decoupling between the…
Modeling the optical point spread function (PSF) is particularly challenging for adaptive optics (AO)-assisted observations owing to the its complex shape and spatial variations. We aim to (i) exhaustively demonstrate the accuracy of a…
Current and future high contrast imaging instruments aim to detect exoplanets at closer orbital separations, lower masses, and/or older ages than their predecessors, with the eventual goal of directly detecting terrestrial-mass…
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…