Analysis and simulation of aperture-sizing strategies with partial adaptive optics

Physics – Optics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The central core intensity of a stellar image observed by a ground-based telescope can be maximized by a judicious balancing of the adaptive optics system and the size of the telescope entrance aperture. For a given aperture, increasing the number of degrees of adaptive optics turbulence compensation will maximize the brightness of the central core. However, for an observatory using an adaptive optics system with a fixed number of degrees-of-freedom, the largest aperture available will not necessarily result in a maximized image central core. The negative effects of atmospheric turbulence, roughly proportional to e(superscript -(D/r(subscript o))(superscript 5/3)), cannot always be compensated by the increased light gathering ability of a larger aperture (proportional to D(superscript 2)). It is shown and verified through simulation that the optimum aperture diameter is a function of N(superscript p) r(subscript o) where N is the number of adaptive optics degrees of freedom and r(subscript o) is the seeing cell size. The simulations show that the exponent p is related to the control algorithm or, more precisely, the figure-of-merit used to drive the deformable mirror actuators. Optimizing the useful aperture of the telescope/adaptive optics system is a strategy that can make use of the variation in site seeing conditions and benefit the astronomer by increasing the available number of observable science objects or reducing the observing time.

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