A slope-based decoupling algorithm to simultaneously control dual deformable mirrors in a woofer–tweeter adaptive optics system.

We propose a slope-based decoupling algorithm to simultaneously control the dual deformable mirrors (DMs) in a woofer–tweeter adaptive optics system. This algorithm can directly use the woofer’s response matrix measured from a Shack–Hartmann wave-front sensor to construct a slope-based orthogonal basis, and then selectively distribute the large-amplitude low-order aberration to woofer DM and the remaining aberration to tweeter DM through the slope-based orthogonal basis. At the same moment, in order to avoid the two DMs generating opposite compensation, a constraint matrix used to reset tweeter control vector is convenient to be calculated with the slope-based orthogonal basis. Numeral simulation demonstrates that this algorithm has a good performance to control the adaptive optics system with dual DMs simultaneously. Compared with the typical decoupling algorithm, this algorithm can take full use of the compensation ability of woofer DM and release the stroke of tweeter DM to compensate high-order aberration. More importantly, it does not need to measure the accurate shape of tweeter’s influence function and keeps better performance of restraining the coupling error with the continuous-dynamic aberration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]