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The Solid-State, Heat-Capacity Laser (SSHCL), under development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a large aperture (100 cm{sup 2}), 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 externally 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.

Horizontal path laser communications are beginning to provide attractive alternatives for high-speed optical communications. In particular, companies are beginning to sell fiberless alternatives for intranet and sporting event video. These applications are primarily aimed at short distance applications (on the order of 1 km pathlength). There exists a potential need to extend this pathlength to distances much greater than a 1km. For cases of long distance optical propagation, atmospheric turbulence will ultimately limit the maximum achievable data rate. In this paper, we propose a method of improved signal quality through the use of adaptive optics. In particular, we show work in progress toward a high-speed, small footprint Adaptive Optics system for horizontal path laser communications. Such a system relies heavily on recent progress in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) deformable mirrors as well as improved communication and computational components. In this paper we detail two Adaptive Optics approaches for improved through-put, the first is the compensated receiver (the traditional Adaptive Optics approach), the second is the compensated transmitter/receiver. The second approach allows for correction of the optical wavefront before transmission from the transmitter and prior to detection at the receiver.

We have developed a high-resolution wavefront control system based on an optically addressed nematic liquid crystal spatial light modulator with several hundred thousand phase control points, a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with two thousand subapertures, and an efficient reconstruction algorithm using Fourier transform techniques. We present quantitative results of experiments to characterize the performance of this system.© (2000) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

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.

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.

We will review the status of the natural/laser guide star adaptive optics facility that is being constructed for the Keck II telescope.

We have developed and tested a method for minimizing static aberrations in adaptive optics systems. In order to correct the static phase aberrations, we need to measure the aberrations through the entire system. We have employed various phase retrieval algorithms to detect these aberrations. We have performed simulations of our experimental setup demonstrating that phase retrieval can improve the static aberrations to below the 20 nm rms level, with the limiting factor being local turbulence in the A0 system. Experimentally thus far, we have improved the static aberrations down to the 50 nm level, with the limiting factor being the ability to adjust the deformable mirror. This should be improved with better control algorithms now being implemented.

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.

Our objective in this report is to develop methods to determine the output pupil wavefront using intensity measurements directly from the science detector. This wavefront can then be used to determine a reference wavefront which will precorrect for the non-common-path aberrations and produce the desired wavefront at the science detector. We describe two phase retrieval algorithms that can be used and a set of simulation studies of AO system calibration. We present the initial experimental results of applying this technique in calibration of the Lick Observatory laser guidestar AO system in a later paper.

A sodium-layer laser guide star adaptive optics system has been developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for use on the 3-meter Shane telescope at Lick Observatory. The system is based on a 127-actuator continuous-surface deformable mirror, a Hartmann wavefront sensor equipped with a fast-framing low-noise CCD camera, and a pulsed solid-state-pumped dye laser tuned to the atomic sodium resonance line at 589 nm. The adaptive optics system has been tested on the Shane telescope using natural reference stars yielding up to a factor of 12 increase in image peak intensity and a factor of 6.5 reduction in image full width at half maximum (FWHM). The results are consistent with theoretical expectations. The laser guide star system has been installed and operated on the Shane telescope yielding a beam with 22 W average power at 589 nm. Based on experimental data, this laser should generate an 8th magnitude guide star at this site, and the integrated laser guide star adaptive optics system should produce images with Strehl ratios of 0.4 at 2.2 {mu}m in median seeing and 0.7 at 2.2 {mu}m in good seeing.

We will describe an adaptive optics system developed for the 1 meter Nickel and 3 meter Shane telescopes at Lick Observatory. Observing wavelengths will be in the visible for the 1 meter telescope and in the near IR on the 3 meter. The adaptive optics system design is based on a 69 actuator continuous surface deformable mirror and a Hartmann wavefront sensor equipped with an intensified CCD framing camera. The system has been tested at the Cassegrain focus of the 1 meter telescope where the subaperture size is 12.5 cm. The wavefront control calculations are performed on a four processor single board computer controlled by a Unix-based system. We will describe the optical system and give details of the wavefront control system design. We will present predictions of the system performance and initial test results.

We present the design and implementation of a very compact adaptive optics system that senses the return light from a sodium guide-star and controls a deformable mirror and a pointing mirror to compensate atmospheric perturbations in the wavefront. The deformable mirror has 19 electrostrictive actuators and triangular subapertures. The wavefront sensor is a Hartmann sensor with lenslets on triangular centers. The high-bandwidth steering mirror assembly incorporates an analog controller that samples the tilt with an avalanche photodiode quad cell. An f/25 imaging leg focuses the light into a science camera that can either obtain long-exposure images or speckle data. In laboratory tests overall Strehl ratios were improved by a factor of 3 when a mylar sheet was used as an aberrator. The crossover frequency at unity gain is 30 Hz.

We discuss issues in optimizing the design of adaptive optics and laser guide star systems for the Keck Telescope. The initial tip-tilt system will use Keck's chopping secondary mirror. We describe design constraints, choice of detector, and expected performance of this tip-tilt system as well as its sky coverage. The adaptive optics system is being optimized for wavelengths of 1 - 2.2 micrometers . We are studying adaptive optics concepts which use a wavefront sensor with varying numbers of subapertures, so as to respond to changing turbulence conditions. The goal is to be able to `gang together' groups of deformable mirror subapertures under software control, when conditions call for larger subapertures. We present performance predictions as a function of sky coverage and the number of deformable mirror degrees of freedom. We analyze the predicted brightness of several candidate laser guide star systems, as a function of laser power and pulse format. These predictions are used to examine the resulting Strehl as a function of observing wavelength. We discuss laser waste heat and thermal management issues, and conclude with an overview of instruments under design to take advantage of the Keck adaptive optics system.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.