AO4ELT, Paris 2009
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A Split LGS/NGS Atmospheric Tomography for MCAO and MOAO on ELTs
Luc Gilles and Brent Ellerbroek
Thirty Meter Telescope Observatory Corp.
AO4ELT Conference
Paris, June 22-26, 2009
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Presentation Outline
Standard (integrated) tomography architecture for LGS MCAO and MOAO– Formulation– Benefits and practical considerations
A split tomography architecture for LGS MCAO– Formulation – Benefits and practical considerations
A Strehl optimal split tomography architecture for LGS MCAO and MOAO – Formulation– Benefits and practical considerations
Comparative Monte Carlo simulation results for NFIRAOS
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
LGS MCAO and MOAO on ELTs
Under consideration/development for the E-ELT, GMT, and TMT
Demonstrators: MAD, Canopus, CANARY
Typical wavefront sensing requirements:
– ~6-9 sodium LGSs for atmospheric tomography
– ~3 low-order NGS WFSsSense tip/tilt and tilt anisoplanatism errorsSense focus errors due to sodium layer range variations
Standard approach to tomographic wavefront reconstruction:
– Minimal variance estimation + least squares DM fitting
– LGS and NGS measurements concatenated into a single vector
– “Pseudo open-loop” measurements used
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Standard (Integrated) Control Architecturefor LGS MCAO and MOAO
“Open-loop”
LGS Gradients
Minimal
Variance
Atmos
Tomo
DM
fitting
Modal
Projection
and
Servo
filtering
Tip/Tilt and
Diff. Focusremoval
DM/TT
commands
“Open-loop”
NGS Gradients
(~12)
Low Pass
Filtering
Concatenate
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Benefits and Practical Considerations
Strehl optimal in the limit of accurate tomographic solutionApplicable to both MCAO and MOAONGS and LGS WFS measurements are very different:– NGSs are typically faint, and measurements require pre-
filtering to optimize servo compensationRequires efficient joint estimation of both low- and high-order atmospheric modes – Impacts tomography algorithm (choice of “solver,” number of
iterations, memory …)Tomography step mixes LGS and NGS WFS operators– Impacts practical implementation of ray-tracing
Split LGS/NGS architecture preferred
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
A Split Tomography Control Architecture for LGS MCAO
“Open-loop”
LGS Gradients
Minimal
Variance
LGS
Atmos
Tomo
DM
fitting
Modal
Projection
and
Servo
filtering
Tip/Tilt and
Diff. Focusremoval
LGS DM
commands
Closed-loop
NGS Gradients
(~12)
Least-Squares
Rank-5 Modal
Reconstruction
Servo
filteringNGS DM commands
TT commands
NGS-controlled modes are invisible to tip/tilt-removed LGS WFSs– Consist of Tip/Tilt and 3 “cancelling” quadratic modes on 2 DMs
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Benefits and Practical Considerations
Tomography step contains only LGS operators– Relaxes computational requirements
Separate NGS servo compensation in 5 modes
NGS reconstruction and servo compensation easy to update for each new NGS asterism
Simple NGS reconstruction/control model requires good LGS correction to minimize aliasing of LGS DM commands into NGS loop (may impact sky coverage)
Applicable to MCAO, inappropriate for MOAO (oversimplified definition/control of NGS modes)
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
A Strehl Optimal Split Control Architecture for LGS MCAO and MOAO
Concept derived from standard (integrated) tomography by application of the Sherman-Morrison matrix inversion formula
Analytically equivalent to integrated tomography in the limit of an exact tomography matrix system solution
NGS modes dependent upon NGS asterism (location and magnitudes) and seeing– Must be pre-computed accurately and updated at ~0.1 Hz– A practical approach has been defined
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Benefits and Practical Considerations
Robust to LGS/NGS loop cross-coupling
Practical, similar to previous split MCAO control architecture
Strehl optimal in the limit of accurate LGS tomographic solution
Applicable to both MCAO and MOAO
Cost of NGS reconstruction dominated by background computation of NGS modes
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Sample NGS Mode Distortion Patterns for NFIRAOS
Comparative Performance Evaluation for NFIRAOS in the high SNR Regime
4 NGS asterisms of 16th magnitude Common 800 Hz sampling of LGS and NGS loopsSimulated NGS WFSs: Z-Tilt NGS reconstruction: Z-Tilt WFS modelSimulated LGS WFSs: physical optics with short-exposure matched filtersTomography algorithms: CG30 and FD3 (split, new split, integ)
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Sample Split Tomography Performance
Median seeing
Includes 116 nm RMS in quadrature of implementation errors
15 arcsec FoV averaged WFE
2400 frames averaged; single turbulence realization
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Sample Comparative Performance
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Summary and Plans
A split wave-front control architecture has been introduced for LGS MCAO
– NGS reconstruction and servo compensation easy to update for each new NGS asterism
– Requires good LGS correction to limit aliasing into NGS loop
– Applicable to MCAO, unsuitable for MOAO
A Strehl optimal split control architecture has been developed for LGS MCAO and MOAO
– Practical, similar to previous split LGS MCAO architecture
– Applicable to both MCAO and MOAO
– 35-60 nm RMS improvement for sample asterisms in the high SNR regime for NFIRAOS
Detailed sky coverage simulations planned in near-future
MOAO analysis planned at completion of MCAO analysis
AO4ELT, Paris 2009
Acknowledgements
The work is supported by the TMT project. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the TMT partner institutions. They are:– the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy
(ACURA)
– the California Institute of Technology, and
– the University of California
This work was supported as well by– the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
– the Canada Foundation for Innovation
– the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation
– the National Research Council of Canada
– the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
– the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund
– the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)
– and the U.S. National Science Foundation