2022
Autores
Pourre, N; Le Bouquin, JB; Milli, J; Sauvage, JF; Fusco, T; Correia, C; Oberti, S;
Publicação
ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
Abstract
Context. The low wind effect (LWE) occurs at the aperture of 8-meter class telescopes when the spiders holding the secondary mirror get significantly cooler than the air. The effect creates phase discontinuities in the incoming wavefront at the location of the spiders. Under the LWE, the wavefront residuals after correction of the adaptive optics (AO) are dominated by low-order aberrations, pistons, and tip-tilts, contained in the pupil quadrants separated by the spiders. Those aberrations, called petal modes, degrade the AO performances during the best atmospheric turbulence conditions. Ultimately, the LWE is an obstacle for high-contrast exoplanet observations at a small angular separation from the host star. Aims. We aim to understand why extreme AO with a Shack-Hartmann (SH) wavefront sensor fails to correct for the petal tip and tilt modes, while these modes imprint a measurable signal in the SH slopes. We explore if the petal tip and tilt content of the LWE can be controlled and mitigated without an additional wavefront sensor. Methods. We simulated the sensitivity of a single subaperture of a SH wavefront sensor in the presence of a phase discontinuity across this subaperture. We explored the effect of the most important parameters: the amplitude of the discontinuity, the spider thickness, and the field of view. We then performed end-to-end simulations to reproduce and explain the behavior of extreme AO systems based on a SH in the presence of the LWE. We then evaluated the efficiency of a new mitigation strategy by running simulations, including atmosphere and realistic LWE phase perturbations. Results. For realistic parameters (i.e. a spider thickness at 25% of a SH subaperture, and a field of view of 3.5 lambda/d), we find that the sensitivity of the SH to a phase discontinuity is dramatically reduced, or even reversed. Under the LWE, a nonzero curl path is created in the measured slopes, which transforms into vortex-structures in the residuals when the loop is closed. While these vortexes are easily seen in the residual wavefront and slopes, they cannot be controlled by the system. We used this understanding to propose a strategy for controlling the petal tip and tilt modes of the LWE by using the measurements from the SH, but excluding the faulty subapertures. Conclusions. The proposed mitigation strategy may be of use in all extreme AO systems based on SH for which the LWE is an issue, such as SPHERE and GRAVITY+.
2022
Autores
Chin J.C.Y.; Cetre S.; Wizinowich P.; Ragland S.; Lilley S.; Wetherell E.; Surendran A.; Correia C.; Marin E.; Biasi R.; Patauner C.; Pescoller D.; Glazebrook K.; Jameson A.; Gauvin W.; Rigaut F.; Gratadour D.; Bernard J.;
Publicação
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Abstract
The W. M. Keck Observatory Adaptive Optics (AO) facilities have been operating with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based real time controller (RTC) since 2007. The RTC inputs data from various AO wavefront and tip/tilt sensors; and corrects image blurring from atmospheric turbulence via deformable and tip/tilt mirrors. Since its commissioning, the Keck I and Keck II RTCs have been upgraded to support new hardware such as pyramid wavefront and infrared tip-tilt sensors. However, they are reaching the limits of their capabilities in terms of processing bandwidth and the ability to interface with new hardware. Together with the Keck All-sky Precision Adaptive optics (KAPA) project, a higher performance and a more reliable RTC is needed to support next generation capabilities such as laser tomography and sensor fusion. This paper provides an overview of the new RTC system, developed with our contractor/collaborators (Microgate, Swinburne University of Technology and Australian National University), and the initial on-sky performance. The upgrade includes an Interface Module to interface with the wavefront sensors and controlled hardware, and a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) based computational engine to meet the system's control requirements and to provide a flexible software architecture to allow future algorithms development and capabilities. The system saw first light in 2021 and is being commissioned in 2022 to support single conjugate laser guide star (LGS) AO, along with a more sensitive EMCCD camera. Initial results are provided to demonstrate single NGS & LGS performance, system reliability, and the planned upgrade for four LGS to support laser tomography.
2022
Autores
Chapman S.C.; Conod U.; Turri P.; Jackson K.; Lardiere O.; Sivanandam S.; Andersen D.; Correia C.; Lamb M.; Ross C.; Sivo G.; Veran J.P.;
Publicação
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Abstract
The Gemini Infra-Red Multi-Object Spectrograph (GIRMOS) is a four-arm, Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO) IFU spectrograph being built for Gemini (commissioning in 2024). GIRMOS is being planned to interface with the new Gemini-North Adaptive Optics (GNAO) system, and is base lined with a requirement of 50% EE within a 0.100 spaxel at H-band. We present a design and forecast the error budget and performance of GIRMOS-MOAO working behind GNAO. The MOAO system will patrol the 20 field of regard of GNAO, utilizing closed loop GLAO or MCAO for lower order correction. GIRMOS MOAA will perform tomographic reconstruction of the turbulence using the GNAO WFS, and utilize order 16x16 actuator DMs operating in open loop to perform an additional correction from the Pseudo Open Loop (POL) slopes, achieving close to diffraction limited performance from the combined GNAO+MOAO correction. This high performance AO spectrograph will have the broadest impact in the study of the formation and evolution of galaxies, but will also have broad reach in fields such as star and planet formation within our Milky Way and supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies.
2022
Autores
Wizinowich P.; Lu J.R.; Cetre S.; Chin J.; Correia C.; Delorme J.R.; Gers L.; Lilley S.; Lyke J.; Marin E.; Ragland S.; Richards P.; Surendran A.; Wetherell E.; Chen C.F.; Chu D.; Do T.; Fassnacht C.; Freeman M.; Gautam A.; Ghez A.; Hunter L.; Jones T.; Liu M.C.; Mawet D.; Max C.; Morris M.; Phillips M.; Ruffio J.B.; Rundquist N.E.; Sabhlok S.; Terry S.; Treu T.; Wright S.;
Publicação
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Abstract
We present the status and plans for the Keck All sky Precision Adaptive optics (KAPA) program. KAPA includes (1) an upgrade to the Keck I laser guide star adaptive optics (AO) facility to improve image quality and sky coverage, (2) the inclusion of AO telemetry-based point spread function estimates with all science exposures, (3) four key science programs, and (4) an educational component focused on broadening the participation of women and underrepresented groups in instrumentation. For this conference we focus on the KAPA upgrades since the 2020 SPIE proceedings1 including implementation of a laser asterism generator, wavefront sensor, real-time controller, asterism and turbulence simulators, the laser tomography system itself along with new operations software and science tools, and modifications to an existing near-infrared tip-tilt sensor to support multiple natural guide star and focus measurements. We will also report on the results of daytime and on-sky calibrations and testing.
2022
Autores
Schatz L.; Codona J.; Long J.D.; Males J.R.; Pullen W.; Lumbres J.; Van Gorkom K.; Chambouleyron V.; Close L.M.; Correia C.; Fauvarque O.; Fusco T.; Guyon O.; Hart M.; Janin-Potiron P.; Johnson R.; Jovanovic N.; Mateen M.; Sauvage J.F.; Neichel B.;
Publicação
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
Abstract
The next generation of giant ground and space telescopes will have the light-collecting power to detect and characterize potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast imaging for the first time. This will only be achievable if the performance of the Giant Segment Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs) extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) systems are optimized to their full potential. A key component of an ExAO system is the wavefront sensor (WFS), which measures aberrations from atmospheric turbulence. A common choice in current and next-generation instruments is the pyramid wavefront sensor (PWFS). ExAO systems require high spatial and temporal sampling of wavefronts to optimize performance and, as a result, require large detectors for the WFS. We present a closed-loop testbed demonstration of a three-sided pyramid wavefront sensor (3PWFS) as an alternative to the conventional four-sided pyramid wavefront (4PWFS) sensor for GSMT-ExAO applications on the innovative comprehensive adaptive optics and coronagraph test instrument (CACTI). The 3PWFS is less sensitive to read noise than the 4PWFS because it uses fewer detector pixels. The 3PWFS has further benefits: a high-quality three-sided pyramid optic is easier to manufacture than a four-sided pyramid. We describe the design of the two components of the CACTI system, the adaptive optics simulator and the PWFS testbed that includes both a 3PWFS and 4PWFS. We detail the error budget of the CACTI system, review its operation and calibration procedures, and discuss its current status. A preliminary experiment was performed on CACTI to study the performance of the 3PWFS to the 4PWFS in varying strengths of turbulence using both the raw intensity and slopes map signal processing methods. This experiment was repeated for a modulation radius of 1.6 and 3.25 ? / D. We found that the performance of the two wavefront sensors is comparable if modal loop gains are tuned.
2022
Autores
Fusco T.; Agapito G.; Neichel B.; Oberti S.; Correia C.; Haguenauer P.; Plantet C.; Pedreros F.; Ke Z.; Costille A.; Jouve P.; Busoni L.; Esposito S.;
Publicação
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
Abstract
Laser guide star (LGS) wave-front sensing (LGSWFS) is a key element of tomographic adaptive optics system. However, when considering Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) scales, the LGS spot elongation becomes so large that it challenges the standard recipes to design LGSWFS. For classical Shack-Hartmann wave-front sensor (SHWFS), which is the current baseline for all ELT LGS-Assisted instruments, a trade-off between the pupil spatial sampling [number of sub-Apertures (SAs)], the SA field-of-view (FoV) and the pixel sampling within each SA is required. For ELT scales, this trade-off is also driven by strong technical constraints, especially concerning the available detectors and in particular their number of pixels. For SHWFS, a larger field of view per SA allows mitigating the LGS spot truncation, which represents a severe loss of performance due to measurement biases. For a given number of available detectors pixels, the SA FoV is competing with the proper sampling of the LGS spots, and/or the total number of SAs. We proposed a sensitivity analysis, and we explore how these parameters impacts the final performance. In particular, we introduce the concept of super resolution, which allows one to reduce the pupil sampling per WFS and opens an opportunity to propose potential LGSWFS designs providing the best performance for ELT scales.
The access to the final selection minute is only available to applicants.
Please check the confirmation e-mail of your application to obtain the access code.