Randall L. Hurd

Recent science and engineering results with the laser guidestar adaptive optic system at Lick Observatory

The Lick Observatory laser guide star adaptive optics system has undergone continual improvement and testing as it is being integrated as a facility science instrument on the Shane 3 meter telescope. Both Natural Guide Star (NGS) and Laser Guide Star (LGS) modes are now used in science observing programs. We report on system performance results as derived from data taken on both science and engineering nights and also describe the newly developed on-line techniques for seeing and system performance characterization. We also describe the future enhancements to the Lick system that will enable additional science goals such as long-exposure spectroscopy.

Update on optical design of adaptive optics system at Lick Observatory

In 1999, we presented our plan to upgrade the adaptive optics (AO) system on the Lick Observatory Shane telescope (3m) from a prototype instrument pressed into field service to a facility instrument. This paper updates the progress of that plan and details several important improvements in the alignment and calibration of the AO bench. The paper also includes a discussion of the problems seen in the original design of the tip/tilt (t/t) sensor used in laser guide star mode, and how these problems were corrected with excellent results.

Technical challenges for the future of high energy lasers

The Solid-State, Heat-Capacity Laser (SSHCL) program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a multi-generation laser development effort scalable to the megawatt power levels with current performance approaching 100 kilowatts. This program is one of many designed to harness the power of lasers for use as directed energy weapons. There are many hurdles common to all of these programs that must be overcome to make the technology viable. There will be a in-depth discussion of the general issues facing state-of-the-art high energy lasers and paths to their resolution. Despite the relative simplicity of the SSHCL design, many challenges have been uncovered in the implementation of this particular system. An overview of these and their resolution are discussed. The overall system design of the SSHCL, technological strengths and weaknesses, and most recent experimental results will be presented.

Intracavity adaptive correction of a 10-kW solid state heat-capacity laser

The Solid-State, Heat-Capacity Laser (SSHCL), under development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a large aperture (100 cm2), confocal, unstable resonator requiring near-diffraction-limited beam quality. There are two primary sources of the aberrations in the system: residual, static aberrations from the fabrication of the optical components and predictable, time-dependent, thermally-induced index gradients within the gain medium. A deformable mirror placed within the cavity is used to correct the aberrations that are sensed with a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. Although it is more challenging than external correction, intracavity correction enables control of the mode growth within the resonator, resulting in the ability to correct a more aberrated system longer. The overall system design, measurement techniques and correction algorithms are discussed. Experimental results from initial correction of the static aberrations and dynamic correction of the time-dependent aberrations are presented.

Initial performance of the Keck AO wavefront controller system

The wavefront controller for the Keck Observatory AO system consists of two separate real-time control loops: a tip-tilt control loop to remove tilt from the incoming wavefront, and a deformable mirror control loop to remove higher-order aberrations. In this paper, we describe these control loops and analyze their performance using diagnostic data acquired during the integration and testing of the AO system on the telescope. Disturbance rejection curves for the controllers are calculated from the experimental data and compared to theory. The residual wavefront errors due to control loop bandwidth are also calculated from the data, and possible improvements to the controller performance are discussed.

Proposed Multiconjugate Adaptive Optics Experiment at Lick Observatory

While the theory behind design of multiconjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) systems is growing, there is still a paucity of experience building and testing such instruments. We propose using the Lick adaptive optics (AO) system as a basis for demonstrating the feasibility/workability of MCAO systems, testing underlying assumptions, and experimenting with different approaches to solving MCAO system issues.

Science with laser guide stars at Lick Observatory

The Lick Observatory laser guide star adaptive optics system has been significantly upgraded over the past two years in order to establish it as a facility science instrument on the Shane 3 meter telescope. Natural Guide Star (NGS) mode has been in use in regular science observing programs for over a year. The Laser Guide Star (LGS) mode has been tested in engineering runs and is now starting to do science observing. In good seeing conditions, the system produces K-band Strehl ratios >0.7 (NGS) and >0.6 (LGS). In LGS mode tip/tilt guiding is achieved with a V~16 natural star anywhere inside a 1 arcminute radius field, which provides about 50% sky coverage. This enables diffraction-limited imaging of regions where few bright guidestars suitable for NGS mode are available. NGS mode requires at least a V~13 guidestar and has a sky coverage of <1%. LGS science programs will include high resolution studies of galaxies, active galactic nuclei, QSO host galaxies and dim pre-main sequence stars.

Wavefront control system for the Keck telescope

The laser guide star adaptive optics system currently being developed for the Keck 2 telescope consists of several major subsystems: the optical bench, wavefront control, user interface and supervisory control, and the laser system. The paper describes the design and implementation of the wavefront control subsystem that controls a 349 actuator deformable mirror for high order correction and tip-tilt mirrors for stabilizing the image and laser positions.

Intracavity adaptive correction of a high-average-power solid state heat-capacity laser

The Solid-State, Heat-Capacity Laser (SSHCL) program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a multigeneration laser development effort scalable to the megawatt power levels. Wavefront quality is a driving metric of its performance. A deformable mirror with over 100 degrees of freedom situated within the cavity is used to correct both the static and dynamic aberrations sensed with a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. The laser geometry is an unstable, confocal resonator with a clear aperture of 10 cm x 10 cm. It operates in a pulsed mode at a high repetition rate (up to 200 Hz) with a correction being applied before each pulse. Wavefront information is gathered in real-time from a low-power pick-off of the high-power beam. It is combined with historical trends of aberration growth to calculate a correction that is both feedback and feed-forward driven. The overall system design, measurement techniques and correction algorithms are discussed. Experimental results are presented.

Real-time control system for adaptive resonator

Sustained operation of high average power solid-state lasers currently requires an adaptive resonator to produce the optimal beam quality. We describe the architecture of a real-time adaptive control system for correcting intra-cavity aberrations in a heat capacity laser. Image data collected from a wavefront sensor are processed and used to control phase with a high-spatial-resolution deformable mirror. Our controller takes advantage of recent developments in low-cost, high-performance processor technology. A desktop-based computational engine and object- oriented software architecture replaces the high-cost rack-mount embedded computers of previous systems.