Eddy Younger

Durham adaptive optics real-time controller

The Durham adaptive optics (AO) real-time controller was initially a proof of concept design for a generic AO control system. It has since been developed into a modern and powerful central-processing-unit-based real-time control system, capable of using hardware acceleration (including field programmable gate arrays and graphical processing units), based primarily around commercial off-the-shelf hardware. It is powerful enough to be used as the real-time controller for all currently planned 8 m class telescope AO systems. Here we give details of this controller and the concepts behind it, and report on performance, including latency and jitter, which is less than 10 μs for small AO systems.

First on-sky SCAO validation of full LQG control with vibration mitigation on the CANARY pathfinder

Adaptive optics provides real time correction of wavefront disturbances on ground based telescopes. Optimizing control and performance is a key issue for ever more demanding instruments on ever larger telescopes affected not only by atmospheric turbulence, but also by vibrations, windshake and tracking errors. Linear Quadratic Gaussian control achieves optimal correction when provided with a temporal model of the disturbance. We present in this paper the first on-sky results of a Kalman filter based LQG control with vibration mitigation on the CANARY instrument at the Nasmyth platform of the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope. The results demonstrate a clear improvement of performance for full LQG compared with standard integrator control, and assess the additional improvement brought by vibration filtering with a tip-tilt model identified from on-sky data, thus validating the strategy retained on the instrument SPHERE at the VLT.

CANARY: the on-sky NGS/LGS MOAO demonstrator for EAGLE

EAGLE is a multi-object 3D spectroscopy instrument currently under design for the 42-metre European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). Precise requirements are still being developed, but it is clear that EAGLE will require (~100 x 100 actuator) adaptive optics correction of ~20 - 60 spectroscopic subfields distributed across a ~5 arcminute diameter field of view. It is very likely that LGS will be required to provide wavefront sensing with the necessary sky coverage. Two alternative adaptive optics implementations are being considered, one of which is Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO). In this scheme, wavefront tomography is performed using a set of LGS and NGS in either a completely open-loop manner, or in a configuration that is only closed-loop with respect to only one DM, probably the adaptive M4 of the E-ELT. The fine wavefront correction required for each subfield is then applied in a completely open-loop fashion by independent DMs within each separate optical relay. The novelty of this scheme is such that on-sky demonstration is required prior to final construction of an E-ELT instrument. The CANARY project will implement a single channel of an MOAO system on the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope. This will be a comprehensive demonstration, which will be phased to include pure NGS, low-order NGS-LGS and high-order woofer-tweeter NGS-LGS configurations. The LGSs used for these demonstrations will be Rayleigh systems, where the variable range-gate height and extension can be used to simulate many of the LGS effects on the E-ELT. We describe the requirements for the various phases of MOAO demonstration, the corresponding CANARY configurations and capabilities and the current conceptual designs of the various subsystems.

Analysis of on-sky MOAO performance of CANARY using natural guide stars

The first on-sky results obtained by CANARY, the multi-object adaptive optics (MOAO) demonstrator, are analysed. The data were recorded at the William Herschel Telescope, at the end of September 2010. We describe the command and calibrations algorithms used during the run and present the observing conditions. The processed data are MOAO-loop engaged or disengaged slopes buffers, comprising the synchronised measurements of the four natural guide stars (NGS) wavefront sensors running in parallel, and near infrared (IR) images. We describe the method we use to establish the error budget of CANARY. We are able to evaluate the tomographic and the open loop errors, having median values around 216 nm and 110 nm respectively. In addition, we identify an unexpected residual quasi-static field aberration term of mean value 110 nm. We present the detailed error budget analysed for three sets of data for three different asterisms. We compare the experimental budgets with the numerically simulated ones and demonstrate a good agreement. We find also a good agreement between the computed error budget from the slope buffers and the measured Strehl ratio on the IR images, ranging between 10% and 20% at 1530 nm. These results make us confident in our ability to establish the error budget of future MOAO instruments.

Performance of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS)

The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS) is a fibre-fed R4 échelle spectrograph employing a white pupil design with red and blue channels for wavelength coverage from 370–890nm. The instrument has four modes, each with object and sky fibres: Low (R~15000), Medium (R~40000) and High Resolution (R~65000), as well as a High Stability mode for enhanced radial velocity precision at R~65000. The High Stability mode contains a fibre double-scrambler and offers optional simultaneous Th-Ar arc injection, or the inclusion of an iodine cell in the beam. The LR mode has unsliced 500μm fibres and makes provision for nod-and-shuffle for improved background subtraction. The MR mode also uses 500μm fibres, while the HR and HS fibres are 350μm. The latter three modes employ modified Bowen-Walraven image-slicers to subdivide each fibre into three slices. All but the High Stability bench is sealed within a vacuum tank, which itself is enclosed in an interlocking Styrostone enclosure, to insulate the spectrograph against temperature and atmospheric pressure variations. The Fibre Instrument Feed (FIF) couples the four pairs of fibres to the telescope focal plane and allows the selection of the appropriate fibre pair for a given mode, and adjustment of the fibre separation to optimally position the sky fibre. The HRS employs a photomultiplier tube for an exposure meter and has a dedicated auto-guider attached to the FIF. We report here on the commissioning results and overall instrument performance since achieving first light on 28 September 2013.

CANARY MOAO demonstrator : on-sky first results

We present the first on-sky results of CANARY, the multi-object adaptive optics demonstrator of EAGLE.

CANARY phase B: on-sky open-loop tomographic LGS AO results

CANARY is an on-sky Laser Guide Star (LGS) tomographic AO demonstrator that has been in operation at the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma since 2010. In 2013, CANARY was upgraded from its initial configuration that used three off-axis Natural Guide Stars (NGS) through the inclusion of four off-axis Rayleigh LGS and associated wavefront sensing system. Here we present the system and analysis of the on-sky results obtained at the WHT between May and September 2014. Finally we present results from the final ‘Phase C’ CANARY system that aims to recreate the tomographic configuration to emulate the expected tomographic AO configuration of both the AOF at the VLT and E-ELT.

An AO real-time control solution for ELT scale instrumentation and application to EAGLE

EAGLE is a proposed multi-IFU instrument for the E-ELT, with a full multi-object AO system. Current baseline designs for this MOAO system include up to six laser guide stars and five natural guide stars. Twenty science channels will be corrected using a corresponding number of independent 84x84 actuator deformable mirrors, though the applied corrections will not be observed by the wavefront sensors. In addition to this, the E-ELT M4 mirror is also part of the AO system, and will operate in closed loop. One possible design for a real-time control system for EAGLE is presented here, based on the Durham AO Real-time Control platform (DARC). Using hardware that we have available, we will present performance results based on the implementation of a sub-set of EAGLE, a single IFU channel. This can then be replicated twenty times to obtain a full EAGLE real-time control system, since each channel is independent. We also consider the implementation of real-time control systems for other ELT instruments, and how far our approach can take us.

CHOUGH: implementation and performance of a high-order 4m AO demonstrator

CHOUGH is a small, fast project to provide an experimental on-sky high-order SCAO capability to the 4.2m WHT telescope. The basic goal has r0-sized sub- apertures with the aim of achieving high-Strehl ratios (> 0:5) in the visible (> 650 nm). It achieves this by including itself into the CANARY experiment: CHOUGH is mounted as a breadboard and intercepts the beam within CANARY via a periscope. In doing so, it takes advantage of the mature CANARY infrastructure, but add new AO capabilities. The key instruments that CHOUGH brings to CANARY are: an atmospheric dispersion compensator; a 32 × 32 (1000 actuator) MEMS deformable mirror; 31 × 31 wavefront sensor; and a complementary (narrow-field) imager. CANARY provides a 241-actuator DM, tip/tilt mirror, and comprehensive off-sky alignment facility together with a RTC. In this work, we describe the CHOUGH sub-systems: backbone, ADC, MEMS-DM, HOWFS, CAWS, and NFSI.

Real-time control for the high order, wide field DRAGON AO test bench

DRAGON is a high order, wide field AO test-bench at Durham. A key feature of DRAGON is the ability to be operated at real-time rates, i.e. frame rates of up to 1kHz, with low latency to maintain AO performance. Here, we will present the real-time control architecture for DRAGON, which includes two deformable mirrors, eight wavefront sensors and thousands of Shack-Hartmann sub-apertures. A novel approach has been taken to allow access to the wavefront sensor pixel stream, reducing latency and peak computational load, and this technique can be implemented for other similar wavefront sensor cameras with no hardware costs. We report on experience with an ELT-suitable wavefront sensor camera. DRAGON will form the basis for investigations into hardware acceleration architectures for AO real-time control, and recent work on GPU and many-core systems (including the Xeon Phi) will be reported. Additionally, the modular structure of DRAGON, its remote control capabilities, distribution of AO telemetry data, and the software concepts and architecture will be reported. Techniques used in DRAGON for pixel processing, slope calculation and wavefront reconstruction will be presented. This will include methods to handle changes in CN2 profile and sodium layer profile, both of which can be modelled in DRAGON. DRAGON software simulation techniques linking hardware-in-the-loop computer models to the DRAGON real-time system and control software will also be discussed. This tool allows testing of the DRAGON system without requiring physical hardware and serves as a test-bed for ELT integration and verification techniques.