High Performance Adaptive Optics Research Articles

Retinal adaptive optics imaging with a pyramid wavefront sensor.

The pyramid wavefront sensor (P-WFS) has replaced the Shack-Hartmann (SH-) WFS as the sensor of choice for high-performance adaptive optics (AO) systems in astronomy. Many advantages of the P-WFS, such as its adjustable pupil sampling and superior sensitivity, are potentially of great benefit for AO-supported imaging in ophthalmology as well. However, so far no high quality ophthalmic AO imaging was achieved using this novel sensor. Usually, a P-WFS requires modulation and high precision optics that lead to high complexity and costs of the sensor. These factors limit the competitiveness of the P-WFS with respect to other WFS devices for AO correction in visual science. Here, we present a cost-effective realization of AO correction with a non-modulated P-WFS based on standard components and apply this technique to human retinal in vivo imaging using optical coherence tomography (OCT). P-WFS based high quality AO imaging was successfully performed in 5 healthy subjects and smallest retinal cells such as central foveal cone photoreceptors are visualized. The robustness and versatility of the sensor is demonstrated in the model eye under various conditions and in vivo by high-resolution imaging of other structures in the retina using standard and extended fields of view. As a quality benchmark, the performance of conventional SH-WFS based AO was used and successfully met. This work may trigger a paradigm shift with respect to the wavefront sensor of choice for AO in ophthalmic imaging.

Fundamental limit of single-mode integral-field spectroscopy

There are several high-performance adaptive optics systems that deliver diffraction-limited imaging on ground-based telescopes, which has renewed interest in single-mode fiber (SMF) spectroscopy for exoplanet characterization. However, the fundamental mode of a telescope is not well matched to those of conventional SMFs. With the recent progress in asphere manufacturing techniques, it may be possible to reshape the fundamental mode of a SMF into any arbitrary distribution. An optimization problem is set up to investigate what the optimal mode field distribution is and what the fundamental throughput limit is for SMF spectroscopy. Both single-object spectrographs and integral-field spectrographs are investigated. The optimal mode for single-object spectrographs is found to be the aperture function of the exit pupil; for integral-field spectrographs, the optimal mode depends on the spatial sampling of the focal plane. For dense sampling, a uniform mode is optimal; for sparse sampling, the mode of a conventional SMF is near optimal. With the optimal fiber mode, a high throughput ( > 80 % ) can be achieved when the focal plane is (super) Nyquist sampled. For Nyquist sampled cases, the optimal mode has almost 20% more throughput than a conventional SMF.

Single conjugate adaptive optics for the ELT instrument METIS

The European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is a 39m large, ground-based optical and near- to mid-infrared telescope under construction in the Chilean Atacama desert. Operation is planned to start around the middle of the next decade. All first light instruments will come with wavefront sensing devices that allow control of the ELT’s intrinsic M4 and M5 wavefront correction units, thus building an adaptive optics (AO) system. To take advantage of the ELT’s optical performance, full diffraction-limited operation is required and only a high performance AO system can deliver this. Further technically challenging requirements for the AO come from the exoplanet research field, where the task to resolve the very small angular separations between host star and planet, has also to take into account the high-contrast ratio between the two objects. We present in detail the results of our simulations and their impact on high-contrast imaging in order to find the optimal wavefront sensing device for the METIS instrument. METIS is the mid-infrared imager and spectrograph for the ELT with specialised high-contrast, coronagraphic imaging capabilities, whose performance strongly depends on the AO residual wavefront errors. We examined the sky and target sample coverage of a generic wavefront sensor in two spectral regimes, visible and near-infrared, to pre-select the spectral range for the more detailed wavefront sensor type analysis. We find that the near-infrared regime is the most suitable for METIS. We then analysed the performance of Shack-Hartmann and pyramid wavefront sensors under realistic conditions at the ELT, did a balancing with our scientific requirements, and concluded that a pyramid wavefront sensor is the best choice for METIS. For this choice we additionally examined the impact of non-common path aberrations, of vibrations, and the long-term stability of the SCAO system including high-contrast imaging performance.

Efficient reconstruction method for ground layer adaptive optics with mixed natural and laser guide stars.

The imaging quality of modern ground-based telescopes such as the planned European Extremely Large Telescope is affected by atmospheric turbulence. In consequence, they heavily depend on stable and high-performance adaptive optics (AO) systems. Using measurements of incoming light from guide stars, an AO system compensates for the effects of turbulence by adjusting so-called deformable mirror(s) (DMs) in real time. In this paper, we introduce a novel reconstruction method for ground layer adaptive optics. In the literature, a common approach to this problem is to use Bayesian inference in order to model the specific noise structure appearing due to spot elongation. This approach leads to large coupled systems with high computational effort. Recently, fast solvers of linear order, i.e., with computational complexity O(n), where n is the number of DM actuators, have emerged. However, the quality of such methods typically degrades in low flux conditions. Our key contribution is to achieve the high quality of the standard Bayesian approach while at the same time maintaining the linear order speed of the recent solvers. Our method is based on performing a separate preprocessing step before applying the cumulative reconstructor (CuReD). The efficiency and performance of the new reconstructor are demonstrated using the OCTOPUS, the official end-to-end simulation environment of the ESO for extremely large telescopes. For more specific simulations we also use the MOST toolbox.

Experimental Design for the Gemini Planet Imager

ABSTRACTThe Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is a high-performance adaptive optics system being designed and built for the Gemini Observatory. GPI is optimized for high-contrast imaging, combining precise and accurate wavefront control, diffraction suppression, and a speckle-suppressing science camera with integral field and polarimetry capabilities. The primary science goal for GPI is the direct detection and characterization of young, Jovian-mass exoplanets. For plausible assumptions about the distribution of gas giant properties at large semimajor axes, GPI will be capable of detecting more than 10% of gas giants more massive than 0.5 MJ around stars younger than 100 Myr and nearer than 75 pc. For systems younger than 1 Gyr, gas giants more massive than 8 MJ and with semimajor axes greater than 15 AU are detected with completeness greater than 50%. A survey targeting young stars in the solar neighborhood will help determine the formation mechanism of gas giant planets by studying them at ages where planet brightness depends upon formation mechanism. Such a survey will also be sensitive to planets at semimajor axes, comparable with the gas giants in our own solar system. In the simple, and idealized, situation in which planets formed by either the “hot-start” model of Burrows et al. or the core accretion model of Marley et al., a few tens of detected planets are sufficient to distinguish how planets form.

Laboratory comparison of coronagraphic concepts under dynamical seeing and high-order adaptive optics correction

The exoplanetary science through direct imaging and spectroscopy will largely expand with the forthcoming development of new instruments at the VLT (SPHERE), Gemini (GPI), Subaru (HiCIAO), and Palomar (Project 1640) observatories. All these ground-based adaptive optics instruments combine extremely high performance adaptive optics (XAO) systems correcting for the atmospheric turbulence with advanced starlight-cancellation techniques such as coronagraphy to deliver contrast ratios of about 10-6 to 10-7. While the past fifteen years have seen intensive research and the development of high-contrast coronagraph concepts, very few concepts have been tested under dynamical seeing conditions (either during sky observation or in a realistic laboratory environment). In this paper, we discuss the results obtained with four different coronagraphs -- phase and amplitude types -- on the High-Order Testbench (HOT), the adaptive optics facility developed at ESO. This facility emphasizes realistic conditions encountered at a telescope (e.g., VLT), including a turbulence generator and a high-order adaptive optics system. It enables to evaluate the performance of high-contrast coronagraphs in the near-IR operating with an AO-corrected PSF of 90% Strehl ratio under 0.5 arcsec dynamical seeing.

High resolution multimodal clinical ophthalmic imaging system

We developed a multimodal adaptive optics (AO) retinal imager which is the first to combine high performance AO-corrected scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (SLO) and swept source Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (SSOCT) imaging modes in a single compact clinical prototype platform. Such systems are becoming ever more essential to vision research and are expected to prove their clinical value for diagnosis of retinal diseases, including glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy (DR), age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and retinitis pigmentosa. The SSOCT channel operates at a wavelength of 1 µm for increased penetration and visualization of the choriocapillaris and choroid, sites of major disease activity for DR and wet AMD. This AO system is designed for use in clinical populations; a dual deformable mirror (DM) configuration allows simultaneous low- and high-order aberration correction over a large range of refractions and ocular media quality. The system also includes a wide field (33 deg.) line scanning ophthalmoscope (LSO) for initial screening, target identification, and global orientation, an integrated retinal tracker (RT) to stabilize the SLO, OCT, and LSO imaging fields in the presence of lateral eye motion, and a high-resolution LCD-based fixation target for presentation of visual cues. The system was tested in human subjects without retinal disease for performance optimization and validation. We were able to resolve and quantify cone photoreceptors across the macula to within ~0.5 deg (~100-150 µm) of the fovea, image and delineate ten retinal layers, and penetrate to resolve features deep into the choroid. The prototype presented here is the first of a new class of powerful flexible imaging platforms that will provide clinicians and researchers with high-resolution, high performance adaptive optics imaging to help guide therapies, develop new drugs, and improve patient outcomes.

High performance adaptive optics system with fine tip/tilt control

Adaptive optics is a technique that uses the measurements of a wave front sensor to flatten distorted wave fronts with a deformable mirror in a feedback loop in order to provide diffraction-limited performance with ground-based telescopes. In order to achieve the highest possible Strehl, a measure of performance, the measurement and the control of the most important disturbances (tip and tilt) have to be optimized. These modes, in spite of being the first modes to be controlled, have the biggest impact on the final performance of the system. This paper concentrates on the estimation and control of the atmospheric tip/tilt leaving out for the moment other sources of error that originate inside the telescope in form of vibrations. It will be shown that the proposed control strategy can reduce the residual variance of the controlled modes by a factor 2 and that, if applied to all modes, can achieve a significantly better Strehl.

Wavefront sensor and wavefront corrector matching in adaptive optics

Matching wavefront correctors and wavefront sensors by minimizing the condition number and mean wavefront variance is proposed. The particular cases of two continuous-sheet deformable mirrors and a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with square packing geometry are studied in the presence of photon noise, background noise and electronics noise. Optimal number of lenslets across each actuator are obtained for both deformable mirrors, and a simple experimental procedure for optimal alignment is described. The results show that high-performance adaptive optics can be achieved even with low cost off-the-shelf Shack-Hartmann arrays with lenslet spacing that do not necessarily match those of the wavefront correcting elements.

Improvement of Shack–Hartmann wave-front sensor measurement for extreme adaptive optics

The development of high-performance adaptive optics systems requires the optimization of wave-front sensors (WFSs) working in the high-order correction regime. We propose a new method to improve the wave-front slope estimation of a Shack-Hartmann WFS in such a regime. Based on a detailed analysis of the different errors in the slope estimation with a classical centroid and with the new method, the gain in terms of wave-front-sensing accuracy in both the detector and the photon noise regimes is stressed. This improvement is proposed without major system disruption.

Anomalous intensity of pinned speckles at high adaptive correction.

Ground-based optical searches for faint stellar or planetary companions about other stars may be limited by speckle noise, which is the rapid intensity fluctuations that are due to motions of remnant atmospheric speckles. Adaptive optics (AO) can reduce residual wave-front phase errors to low values, substantially reducing the unwanted power in the speckle halo. At high correction, however, the noise in the halo will be dominated by anomalously bright "pinned" speckles that have a number of unusual properties. They can have negative intensities and will appear in spatially antisymmetric patterns; they are spatially pinned to Airy rings and have zero mean in a sufficiently long integration. Some of these properties may be used to reduce the unanticipated effect of pinned speckles on companion searches, depending on details of the AO system. But, in short exposures, pinned speckles dominate speckle noise over much of the inner halo for Strehl ratios S as low as 0.6 and over much of the outer halo too as Strehl and deformable-mirror actuator densities increase. I show that these anomalously bright pinned speckles are not included in the traditional expression for speckle power in an image, (1 - S), on which sensitivity estimates of future high-performance AO systems have been based.