Investigation of anisoplanatic effect in adaptive optics for atmospheric turbulence correction

Abstract

Laser Guide Star (LGS) is an artificial atmospheric turbulence probing source of adaptive optics (AO) for compensating for the wave-front error of interested object in real time, and for providing approximate diffraction-limited resolution recovery. Actually the unavoidable anisoplanatic error resulting from different light experience between the LGS and the object of interest through turbulent atmosphere will lead to an incomplete wave-front distortion compensation of the object. In this paper the statistics of anisoplanatic errors and their associated Zernike-modal variances have been systematically investigated for different LGS sources by means of numerical simulation, including Rayleigh LGS and Sodium LGS. The numerical results show that the probed wave-front expanded Zernike-modal decorrelation versus angular deviation between the LGS and the object of interest becomes much more sensitive for the higher altitude LGS. For minor angular deviations with LGS focal spots being still within the ray path from the object to the telescope, the reduction of the error from turbulence above the LGS altitude is still a leading cause to decrease the residual error variance after AO correction. However, for the greater angular deviations with LGS focal spots moving on the outside of the ray path from the object to the telescope, higher-altitude LGS could lead to an increasing residual error variance after AO complete correction with its wave-front as reference. At this point the adopted LGS operation mode and the AO system modal correction optimization should be taken into account for achieving a desired residual wave-front error.