English

Towards understanding interactions between the AO system and segment co-phasing with the vector-Zernike wavefront sensor on Keck

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2024-07-25 v1

Abstract

We extend our previous demonstration of the first on-sky primary mirror segment closed-loop control on Keck using a vector-Zernike wavefront sensor (vZWFS), which improved the Strehl ratio on the NIRC2 science camera by up to 10 percentage points. Segment co-phasing errors contribute to Keck contrast limits and will be necessary to correct for the segmented Extremely Large Telescopes and future space missions. The goal of the post-AO vZWFS on Keck is to monitor and correct segment co-phasing errors in parallel with science observations. The ZWFS is ideal for measuring phase discontinuities and is one of the most sensitive WFSs, but has limited dynamic range. The Keck vZWFS consists of a metasurface mask imposing two different phase shifts to orthogonal polarizations, split into two pupil images, extending its dynamic range. We report on the vZWFS closed-loop co-phasing performance and early work towards understanding the interactions between the AO system and segment phasing. We discuss a comparison of the AO performance when co-phasing by aligning segment edges, as is currently done at Keck, compared with aligning to the average phase over the segments, as is done by the vZWFS.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.16791,
  title  = {Towards understanding interactions between the AO system and segment co-phasing with the vector-Zernike wavefront sensor on Keck},
  author = {Maïssa Salama and Charlotte Guthery and Vincent Chambouleyron and Rebecca Jensen-Clem and J. Kent Wallace and Mitchell Troy and Jacques-Robert Delorme and Daren Dillon and Daniel Echeverri and Yeyuan and Xin and Wen Hao and Xuan and Nemanja Jovanovic and Dimitri Mawet and Peter L. Wizinowich and Rachel Bowens-Rubin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.16791},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Proceedings of SPIE, 13097-61, 8 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:51:29.915Z