Limits of Adaptive Optics for High-Contrast Imaging

By Olivier Guyon. 2005

282 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wave front chromaticity, and scintillation on the point-spread function (PSF) contrast achievable with ground-based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wave front sensing schemes. I show that a wave front sensor (WFS) based on the Zernike phase contrast technique offers the best sensitivity to photon noise at all spatial frequencies, while the Shack-Hartmann WFS is significantly less sensitive. In AO systems performing wave front sensing in the visible and scientific imaging in the near-IR, the PSF contrast limit is set by the scintillation chromaticity induced by Fresnel propagation through the atmosphere. On an 8 m telescope, the PSF contrast is then limited to 10-4 to 10-5 in the central arcsecond. Wave front sensing and scientific imaging should therefore be done at the same wavelength, in which case, on bright sources, PSF contrasts between 10-6 and 10-7 can be achieved within 1'' on an 8 m telescope in optical/near-IR. The impact of atmospheric turbulence parameters (seeing, wind speed, turbulence profile) on the PSF contrast is quantified. I show that a focal plane wave front sensing scheme offers unique advantages, and I discuss how to implement it. Coronagraphic options are also briefly discussed.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2a73599cbf022ee2ad221d51d2e275e0e65f80d2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Aerospace Engineering

1. Benoît Collins
2. S. Ridgway
3. M. Kuchner
4. E. Pluzhnik
5. Wesley A. Traub
6. Roger Davies
7. M. Kasper
8. P. Bordé

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Olivier Guyon
2. S. Ridgway
3. E. Pluzhnik
4. P. Bordé
5. Benoît Collins
6. M. Kuchner
7. Wesley A. Traub
8. D. Weinberg

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. S. Jha
2. Benoît Collins
3. S. Ridgway
4. M. Kuchner
5. E. Pluzhnik
6. Wesley A. Traub
7. Roger Davies
8. M. Kasper

Citations in the corpus

• Adaptive Optics for Astronomy (2012, background): “Guyon (2005) carried out a theoretical study of noise propagation properties of the different WFS for high-contrast imaging applications.”
• High-Contrast Imaging from Space: Speckle Nulling in a Low-Aberration Regime (2005, background): “Moreover, Fresnel propagation turns phase aberrations into amplitude aberrations and the reverse (e.g., Guyon 2005).”
• The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope: 100 Hubbles for the 2020s (2019, background): “Ground-based high-contrast instrumentation is limited to flux ratios of ~107-8 at small working angles in full field of view imaging, even under optimistic assumptions for 30m-class telescopes (Guyon, 2005; Males & Guyon, 2018).”
• Theoretical Limits on Extrasolar Terrestrial Planet Detection with Coronagraphs (2006, methodology): “Several authors have recently explored promising wavefront control schemes free of aliasing and non-common path aberrations (Codona & Angel 2004; Labeyrie 2004; Guyon 2005; Bordé & Traub 2006), and contrast levels obtained in laboratory (Trauger et al. 2003) are approaching the desired performance.”