Solar adaptive optics systems for the New Vacuum Solar Telescope at the Fuxian Lake Solar Observatory

Adaptive optics(AO)is essential for high-quality ground-based observations with large telescopes because it counters the impact of wavefront aberrations caused by atmospheric turbulence.The new vacuum solar telescope(NVST)is one of the most important high-resolution solar observation instruments in the world.Three sets of solar adaptive optics systems have been developed and installed on this telescope:conventional adaptive optics,ground layer adaptive optics,and multi-conjugate adaptive optics.These have been in operation from 2018 to 2023.This paper details the development and application of solar adaptive optics on the NVST and discusses the newest instrumentation.

Adaptive Optics System and Its Application Predictions at 1.2m Telescope of Yunnan Observatory

A 61 element adaptive optical system has been preliminary tested in the Coudé path of the 1 2m telescope at the Yunnan observatory this year. The whole system will be fully operated next year. This paper describes the AO system performances and its first experiment results, and the possible astronomical research topics.

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.

First light for the sodium laser guide star adaptive optics system on the Lijiang 1.8 m telescope

A first generation sodium Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics System （LGS-AOS） was developed and integrated into the Lijiang 1.8 m telescope in 2013. The LGS-AOS has three sub-systems： （1） a 20W long pulsed sodium laser, （2） a 300-millimeter-diameter laser launch telescope, and （3） a 37-element com- pact adaptive optics system. On 2014 January 25, we obtained high resolution images of an my 8.18 star, HIP 43963, during the first light of the LGS-AOS. In this paper, the sodium laser, the laser launch telescope, the compact adaptive optics system and the first light results will be presented.

Comparison between iterative wavefront control algorithm and direct gradient wavefront control algorithm for adaptive optics system

Among all kinds of wavefront control algorithms in adaptive optics systems, the direct gradient wavefront control algorithm is the most widespread and common method. This control algorithm obtains the actuator voltages directly from wavefront slopes through pre-measuring the relational matrix between deformable mirror actuators and Hartmann wavefront sensor with perfect real-time characteristic and stability. However, with increasing the number of sub-apertures in wavefront sensor and deformable mirror actuators of adaptive optics systems, the matrix operation in direct gradient algorithm takes too much time, which becomes a major factor influencing control effect of adaptive optics systems. In this paper we apply an iterative wavefront control algorithm to high-resolution adaptive optics systems, in which the voltages of each actuator are obtained through iteration arithmetic, which gains great advantage in calculation and storage. For AO system with thousands of actuators, the computational complexity estimate is about O(n2) ～ O(n3) in direct gradient wavefront control algorithm, while the computational complexity estimate in iterative wavefront control algorithm is about O(n) ～(O(n)3/2), in which n is the number of actuators of AO system. And the more the numbers of sub-apertures and deformable mirror actuators, the more significant advantage the iterative wavefront control algorithm exhibits.

First generation solar adaptive optics system for 1-m New Vacuum Solar Telescope at Fuxian Solar Observatory

The first generation solar adaptive optics （AO） system, which consists of a fine tracking loop with a tip-tilt mirror （TTM） and a correlation tracker, and a high-order correction loop with a 37-element deformable mirror （DM）, a correlating Shack-Hartmann （SH） wavefront sensor （WFS） based on the ab- solute difference algorithm and a real time controller （RTC）, has been developed and installed at the 1-m New Vacuum Solar Telescope （NVST） that is part of Fuxian Solar Observatory （FSO）. Compared with the 37-element solar AO system developed for the 26-cm Solar Fine Structure Telescope, administered by Yunnan Astronomical Observatories, this AO system has two updates： one is the subaperture arrangement of the WFS changed from square to hexagon; the other is the high speed camera of the WFS and the corre- sponding real time controller. The WFS can be operated at a frame rate of 2100 Hz and the error correction bandwidth can exceed 100 Hz. After AO correction, the averaged residual image motion and the averaged RMS wavefront error are reduced to 0.06＂ and 45 nm, respectively. The results of on-sky testing obser- vations demonstrate better contrast and finer structures of the images taken with AO than those without AO.

Simulation of a ground-layer adaptive optics system for the Kunlun Dark Universe Survey Telescope

Ground Layer Adaptive Optics （GLAO） is a recently developed technique extensively applied to ground-based telescopes, which mainly compensates for the wavefront errors induced by ground-layer turbulence to get an appropriate point spread function in a wide field of view. The compensation results mainly depend on the turbu-lence distribution. The atmospheric turbulence at Dome A in the Antarctic is mainly distributed below 15 meters, which is an ideal site for applications of GLAO. The GLAO system has been simulated for the Kunlun Dark Universe Survey Telescope, which will be set up at Dome A, and uses a rotating mirror to generate several laser guide stars and a wavefront sensor with a wide field of view to sequentially measure the wavefronts from different laser guide stars. The system is simulated on a computer and parameters of the system are given, which provide detailed information about the design of a practical GLAO system.

Adaptive Threshold Wave Front Sensing for Portable Adaptive Optics System Driven by Hybrid Parallel Technique

Our Portable Adaptive Optics(PAO)system designed for high-contrast imaging of exoplanets with current 2-4 m class telescopes achieves a correction speed of nearly 1000 Hz,utilizing a Shack-Hartmann Wave Front Sensor(WFS)in a 9×9 sub-aperture configuration.As we look towards adapting the PAO system for larger telescopes,an increase in the number of sub-apertures in the WFS and enhanced precision in wave front detection are imperative.Originally programmed in LabVIEW,our initial PAO software is based on a traditional centroid calculation module for nighttime wave front sensing and lacks adaptive processing of background noise.To address these limitations and to boost the PAO system's performance and accuracy in wave front detection,we propose a compressive neural network(Th-Net)combined with a specialized hybrid parallel programming approach for wave front detection.Our experimental results indicate that this hybrid parallel technique and Th-Net significantly enhance the PAO system's operational speed and wave front detection precision under uneven background noise.This work paves the way so that a duplicable and low-cost PAO system can be used for direct imaging of exoplanets with large telescopes.

Imaging of human parafoveal area with large field of view in adaptive optics line scanning ophthalmoscope

The parafoveal area,with its high concentration of photoreceptors andfine retinal capillaries,is crucial for central vision and often exhibits early signs of pathological changes.The current adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope(AOSLO)provides an excellent tool to acquire accurate and detailed information about the parafoveal area with cellular resolution.However,limited by the scanning speed of two-dimensional scanning,thefield of view(FOV)in the AOSLO system was usually less than or equal to 2,and the stitching for the parafoveal area required dozens of images,which was time-consuming and laborious.Unfortunately,almost half of patients are unable to obtain stitched images because of their poorfixation.To solve this problem,we integrate AO technology with the line-scan imaging method to build an adaptive optics line scanning ophthalmoscope(AOLSO)system with a larger FOV.In the AOLSO,afocal spherical mirrors in pairs are nonplanar arranged and the distance and angle between optical elements are optimized to minimize the aberrations,two cylinder lenses are orthogonally placed before the imaging sensor to stretch the point spread function(PSF)for sufficiently digitizing light energy.Captured human retinal images show the whole parafoveal area with 55FOV,60 Hz frame rate and cellular resolutions.Take advantage of the 5FOV of the AOLSO,only 9 frames of the retina are captured with several minutes to stitch a montage image with an FOV of 99,in which photoreceptor counting is performed within approximately 5eccentricity.The AOLSO system not only provides cellular resolution but also has the capability to capture the parafoveal region in a single frame,which offers great potential for noninvasive studying of the parafoveal area.

The Educational Adaptive-optics Solar Telescope at the Shanghai Astronomy Museum

The Educational Adaptive-optics Solar Telescope(EAST)at the Shanghai Astronomy Museum has been running routine astronomical observations since 2021.It is a 65-cm-aperture Gregorian solar telescope for scientific education,outreach,and research.The telescope system is designed in an“open”format so that the solar tower architecture can be integrated with it,and visitors can watch the observations live from inside the tower.Equipped with adaptive optics,a high-resolution imaging system,and an integral field unit spectro-imaging system,this telescope can obtain high-resolution solar images in the TiO and Hαbands,and perform spectral image reconstruction using 400 optical fibers at selected wavelengths.It can be used not only in public education and scientific outreach but also in solar physics research.

Fuzzy Proportional Integral Derivative control of a voice coil actuator system for adaptive deformable mirrors

Research on adaptive deformable mirror technology for voice coil actuators(VCAs)is an important trend in the development of large ground-based telescopes.A voice coil adaptive deformable mirror contains a large number of actuators,and there are problems with structural coupling and large temperature increases in their internal coils.Additionally,parameters of the traditional proportional integral derivative(PID)control cannot be adjusted in real-time to adapt to system changes.These problems can be addressed by introducing fuzzy control methods.A table lookup method is adopted to replace real-time calculations of the regular fuzzy controller during the control process,and a prototype platform has been established to verify the effectiveness and robustness of this process.Experimental tests compare the control performance of traditional and fuzzy proportional integral derivative(Fuzzy-PID)controllers,showing that,in system step response tests,the fuzzy control system reduces rise time by 20.25%,decreases overshoot by 78.24%,and shortens settling time by 67.59%.In disturbance rejection experiments,fuzzy control achieves a 46.09%reduction in the maximum deviation,indicating stronger robustness.The Fuzzy-PID controller,based on table lookup,outperforms the standard controller significantly,showing excellent potential for enhancing the dynamic performance and disturbance rejection capability of the voice coil motor actuator system.

First light on an adaptive optics system using a non-modulation pyramid wavefront sensor for a 1.8 m telescope

Our adaptive optics system based on a non-modulation pyramid wavefront sensor is integrated into a 1.8 m astronomical telescope installed at the Yunnan Observatory in LiJiang, and the first light with high-resolution imaging of an astronomical star is successfully achieved. In this Letter, the structure and performance of this system are introduced briefly, and then the observation results of star imaging are reported to show that the angular resolution of an adaptive optics system using a non-modulation pyramid wavefront sensor can approach the diffraction limit quality of a 1.8 m telescope.

Real-time measurement of atmospheric parameters for the 127-element adaptive optics system of 1.8-m telescope

A real-time method for measuring atmospheric parameters based on co-processor field-programmable gate array （FPGA） and main processor digital signal processing （DSP） is proposed for ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics （AO） systems. Coherence length, outer scale, average wind speed, and coherence time are estimated according to closed-loop data on the residual slopes and the corrected voltages of AO systems. This letter introduces the principle and architecture design of the proposed method, which is successfully applied in the 127-element AO system of the 1.8-m telescope of Yunnan Astronomical Observatory. The method enables real-time atmospheric observations with the same object and path of the AO system. This method is also applicable to extended objects.

Combinational-deformable-mirror adaptive optics system for compensation of high-order modes of wavefront

A new kind of adaptive optics （AO） system, in which several low spatial frequency deformable mirrors （DMs） with optical conjugation relationship are combined to correct high-order aberrations, is proposed. The phase compensation principle and the control method of the combinational AO system are introduced. The numerical simulations for the AO system with two 60-element DMs are presented. The results indicate that the combinational DM in the AO system can correct different aberrations effectively as one single DM with more actuators, and there is no change of control method. This technique can be applied to a large telescope AO system to improve the spatial compensation capability for wavefront by using current DM.

Optimization of the transmitted wavefront for the infrared adaptive optics system

The adaptive optics system for the second-generation Very Large Telescope-interferometer(VLTI)instrument GRAVITY consists of a novel cryogenic near-infrared wavefront sensor to be installed at each of the four unit telescopes of the Very Large Telescope(VLT).Feeding the GRAVITY wavefront sensor with light in the 1.4–2.4μm band,while suppressing laser light originating from the GRAVITY metrology system requires custom-built optical componets.In this paper,we present the development of a quantitative near-infraredpoint diffraction interferometric characterization technique,which allows measuring the transmitted wavefront error of the silicon entrance windows of the wavefront sensor cryostat.The technique can be readily applied to quantitative phase measurements in the near-infrared regime.Moreover,by employing a slightly off-axis optical setup,the proposed method can optimize the required spatial resolution and enable real time measurement capabilities.The feasibility of the proposed setup is demonstrated,followed by a theoretical analysis and experimental results.Our experimental results show that the phase error repeatability in the nanometer regime can be achieved.

Zonal decoupling algorithm for dual deformable mirror adaptive optics system

A zonal decoupling algorithm used to control a dual deformable mirror （DM） is proposed. One of the two DMs is characterized with a large stroke （woofer）, while the other one is characterized by a high spatial frequency （tweeter）. A numerical model is used to compare the zonal decoupling algorithm with some traditional zonal decoupling algorithms. The simulation results indicate that the algorithm presented in this Letter improves the performance in suppressing the coupling error. An experimental system is built to prove the effectiveness of this algorithm. The experiments demonstrate that the phase aberrations could be effectively compensated and that the coupling error could also be suppressed.

Performance modeling of the adaptive optics system on the 2.16 m telescope

The adaptive optics system on the 2.16 m telescope is modeled and simulated using an ends-to-ends Monte Carlo method in this paper.Under the optimized parameters,the Strehl ratio can be increased from about 0.02 to more than 0.2 in the J,H and K bands with a classical adaptive optics system.Based on the simulation results,the practical system design is also considered and discussed.

Performance measurement of adaptive optics system based on Strehl ratio

In this article, a method for measuring the performance of adaptive optics （AO） systems is designed and validated by experiments. The Strehl ratio （SR） which is based on the target images is used to evaluate the performance quantitatively because it relates to the effect of AO correction directly. In the calculation of the SR, to avoid energy scaling in the diffraction-limited point spread function, an algorithm based on the integral of the optical transfer function （OTF） is proposed. Then, a 97-element AO system is established to validate this method, and a white-light fiber source is used as a point-like target. To simulate the practical conditions which influence the performance of the AO system, targets of different brightness are simulated in terms of different signal-to-noise ratios （SNRs） of the Shack-Hartmann （SH）, and atmospheric turbulence is simulated in terms of the Fried＇s coherence length and the Greenwood＇s frequency. Finally, two experiments are conducted in which the SR of different simulated conditions are measured. The results of the experiments show that for a moderate SNR of SH the experimenting AO system is capable of closed-loop wavefront correction when the Fried＇s coherence length is larger than 5cm and the Greenwood＇s frequency is lower than 60 Hz. The results also show that the performance of AO is susceptible to the SNR of SH. The experiments validates the effectiveness of this method.

Characterizing microlensing planetary system OGLE-2014-BLG-0676Lb with adaptive optics imaging

We constrain the host-star flux of the microlensing planet OGLE-2014-BLG-0676 Lb using adaptive optics(AO)images taken by the Magellan and Keck telescopes.We measure the flux of the light blended with the microlensed source to be K=16.79±0.04 mag and J=17.76±0.03 mag.Assuming that the blend is the lens star,we find that the host is a 0.73_(-0.29)^(+0.14)M_(⊙)star at a distance of2.67_(-1.41)^(+0.77)kpc,where the relatively large uncertainty in angular Einstein radius measurement is the major source of uncertainty.With mass of M_(p)=3.68_(-1.44)^(+0.69)M_J,the planet is likely a"super Jupiter"at a projected separation of r_(⊥)=4.53_(-2.50)^(+1.49)AU,and a degenerate model yields a similar M_p=3.73_(-1.47)^(+0.73)M_(J)at a closer separation of r_(⊥)=2.56_(-1.41)^(+0.84)AU.Our estimates are consistent with the previous Bayesian analysis based on a Galactic model.OGLE-2014-BLG-0676 Lb belongs to a sample of planets discovered in a"secondgeneration"planetary microlensing survey and we attempt to systematically constrain host properties of this sample with high-resolution imaging to study the distribution of planets.

Simulated human eye retina adaptive optics imaging system based on a liquid crystal on silicon device

In order to obtain a clear image of the retina of model eye, an adaptive optics system used to correct the wave-front error is introduced in this paper. The spatial light modulator that we use here is a liquid crystal on a silicon device instead of a conversional deformable mirror. A paper with carbon granule is used to simulate the retina of human eye. The pupil size of the model eye is adjustable （3-7mm）. A Shack-Hartman wave-front sensor is used to detect the wave-front aberration. With this construction, a value of peak-to-valley is achieved to be 0.086 A, where A is wavelength. The modulation transfer functions before and after corrections are compared. And the resolution of this system after correction （691p/m） is very close to the diffraction limit resolution. The carbon granule on the white paper which has a size of 4.7μm is seen clearly. The size of the retina cell is between 4 and 10 μm. So this system has an ability to image the human eye＇s retina.