Correction performance estimation of atmospheric turbulence based on eigenmode method.

An eigenmode method is proposed to estimate the correction performance of atmospheric turbulence based on a deformable mirror (DM). On the basis of the eigenmode, a formula that describes the relationship among residual error, eigenmode N , and turbulence strength D/r 0 (D , telescope aperture, r 0 , atmospheric coherence length) is derived. The eigenmode and the Zernike polynomial methods are compared, too. An experiment is conducted, and results validate the theoretical equations. Hence, the correction performance of atmospheric turbulence may be estimated with the eigenmode method. This result is helpful for conveniently designing and evaluating the adaptive optics system used for turbulence correction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]