Related papers: Phasing the Giant Magellan Telescope: Lab Experime…

Direct imaging of Earth-like exoplanets requires high contrast imaging capability and high angular resolution. Primary mirror segmentation is a key technological solution for large-aperture telescopes because it opens the path toward…

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…

Capturing high resolution imagery of the Earth's surface often calls for a telescope of considerable size, even from Low Earth Orbits (LEO). A large aperture often requires large and expensive platforms. For instance, achieving a resolution…

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 the first on-sky segmented primary mirror closed-loop piston control using a Zernike wavefront sensor (ZWFS) installed on the Keck II telescope. Segment co-phasing errors are a primary contributor to contrast limits on Keck and…

The wavefront sensors used today at the biggest World's telescopes have either a high dynamic range or a high sensitivity, and they are subject to a linear trade off between these two parameters. A new class of wavefront sensors, the…

The crossed-sine wavefront sensor (WFS) is a pupil plane wavefront sensor that measures the first derivatives of the wavefront. It is made by three main components: a gradient transmission filter (GTF) built from a product of sine functions…

As the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) approaches operational status, optimising its imaging performance is critical. A differential piston, arising from either the adaptive optics (AO) control loop, thermomechanical effects, or other…

The ingot WFS is a new kind of wavefront sensor specifically designed to deal with the elongation of LGS reference sources on ELT-class telescopes. Like the pyramid, it belongs to the family of pupil plane wavefront sensors and can be…

(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…

Searching for nearby exoplanets with direct imaging is one of the major scientific drivers for both space and ground-based programs. While the second generation of dedicated high-contrast instruments on 8-m class telescopes is about to…

Pyramid wavefront sensors (PWFSs) are the preferred choice for current and future extreme adaptive optics (XAO) systems. Almost all instruments use the PWFS in its modulated form to mitigate its limited linearity range. However, this…

Modern extreme adaptive optics (AO) systems achieving diffraction-limited performance open up new possibilities for instrumentation. Especially important for the fields of spectroscopy and interferometry is that it enables the prospect to…

This paper presents the basic principle and theoretical relationships of an original method allowing to retrieve the Wavefront Errors (WFE) of a ground or space-borne telescope when combining its main pupil with a second, decentered…

The Giant Magellan Telescope will use laser tomography adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric turbulence using artificial guide stars created in the sodium layer of the atmosphere (altitude ~95km). The sodium layer has appreciable…

This paper introduces a novel wavefront sensing approach that relies on the Fourier analysis of a single conventional direct image. In the high Strehl ratio regime, the relation between the phase measured in the Fourier plane and the…

We propose a focal-plane wavefront sensor (FPWFS) based on a short multimode fiber (MMF) capable of operating under moderately broadband illumination. By coupling the aberrated focal-plane field into an MMF of length <1 cm, we preserve…

In astronomy or biological imaging, refractive index inhomogeneities of e.g. atmosphere or tissues induce optical aberrations which degrade the desired information hidden behind the medium. A standard approach consists in measuring these…

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…

The basic outline of a pupil plane WaveFront Sensor is reviewed taking into account that the source to be sensed could be different from an unresolved source, i.e. it is extended, and that it could deploy also in a 3D fashion, enough to…