The Gemini multiconjugate adaptive optics system (GeMS) at the Gemini South telescope in Cerro Pachon is the first sodium-based multilaser guide star (LGS) adaptive optics system. It uses five LGSs and two deformable mirrors to measure and compensate for atmospheric distortions. The GeMS project started in 1999, and saw first light in 2011. It is now in regular operation, producing images close to the diffraction limit in the near-infrared, with uniform quality over a field of view of two square arcminutes. This paper is the first one in a two-paper review of GeMS. It describes the system, explains why and how it was built, discusses the design choices and trade-offs, and presents the main issues encountered during the course of the project. Finally, we briefly present the results of the system first light.

/pdf/gemini-multiconjugate-adaptive-optics-system-review-i-design-elf772ko29.pdf

Gemini multiconjugate adaptive optics system review - I. Design, trade-offs and integration

Small-animal imaging has shown great promise in the areas of oncology,cardiology, molecular biology,drug discovery and development, and genetics [Green, 2001]. The demand for small-animal imaging has increased greatly with the recent advances in biomolecular research. Examples include functional genomics, functional protenomics, and molecular targeting of tumor cells or cells with other abnormalities. SPECT and PET imaging are of particular interest because these systems intrinsically image function instead of anatomy. Traditional thought has precluded SPECT and PET imaging of small animals because of the lack of resolution of these systems.In recent years at CGRI and other research facilities, numerous fast, high-resolution and high sensitivity SPECT imaging systems designed specifically for imaging small animals have been developed. These systems produce three-dimensional images of the distribution of radiotracers within the animal and, because these systems have no moving parts, dynamic studies can be readily performed. However, there are many components of such imaging systems that need to be optimized in order to best perform small-animal imaging studies.

Objective Assessment of Image Quality

We describe modeling and simulation results for the Thirty Meter Telescope on the degradation of sodium laser guide star Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor measurement accuracy that will occur due to the spatial structure and temporal variations of the mesospheric sodium layer. By using a contiguous set of lidar measurements of the sodium profile, the performance of a standard centroid and of a more refined noise-optimal matched filter spot position estimation algorithm is analyzed and compared for a nominal mean signal level equal to 1000 photodetected electrons per subaperture per integration time, as a function of subaperture to laser launch telescope distance and CCD pixel readout noise. Both algorithms are compared in terms of their rms spot position estimation error due to noise, their associated wavefront error when implemented on the Thirty Meter Telescope facility adaptive optics system, their linear dynamic range, and their bias when detuned from the current sodium profile.

/pdf/shack-hartmann-wavefront-sensing-with-elongated-sodium-laser-cyx7xq3fby.pdf

Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing with elongated sodium laser beacons: centroiding versus matched filtering

Laser guide star (LGS) atmospheric tomography is described in the literature as integrated minimum-variance tomographic wavefront reconstruction from a concatenated wavefront-sensor measurement vector consisting of many high-order, tip/tilt (TT)-removed LGS measurements, supplemented by a few low-order natural guide star (NGS) components essential to estimating the TT and tilt anisoplanatism (TA) modes undetectable by the TT-removed LGS wavefront sensors (WFSs). The practical integration of these NGS WFS measurements into the tomography problem is the main subject of this paper. A split control architecture implementing two separate control loops driven independently by closed-loop LGS and NGS measurements is proposed in this context. Its performance is evaluated in extensive wave optics Monte Carlo simulations for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) LGS multiconjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) system, against the delivered performance of the integrated control architecture. Three iterative algorithms are analyzed for atmospheric tomography in both cases: a previously proposed Fourier domain preconditioned conjugate gradient (FDPCG) algorithm, a simple conjugate gradient (CG) algorithm without preconditioning, and a novel layer-oriented block Gauss-Seidel conjugate gradient algorithm (BGS-CG). Provided that enough iterations are performed, all three algorithms yield essentially identical closed-loop residual RMS wavefront errors for both control architectures, with the caveat that a somewhat smaller number of iterations are required by the CG and BGS-CG algorithms for the split approach. These results demonstrate that the split control approach benefits from (i) a simpler formulation of minimum-variance atmospheric tomography allowing for algorithms with reduced computational complexity and cost (processing requirements), (ii) a simpler, more flexible control of the NGS-controlled modes, and (iii) a reduced coupling between the LGS- and NGS-controlled modes. Computation and memory requirements for all three algorithms are also given for the split control approach for the TMT LGS AO system and appear feasible in relation to the performance specifications of current hardware technology.

/pdf/split-atmospheric-tomography-using-laser-and-natural-guide-2w8juybq6r.pdf

Split atmospheric tomography using laser and natural guide stars.

Recent progress has been made to compute efficiently the open-loop minimum-variance reconstructor (MVR) for multiconjugate adaptive optics systems by a combination of sparse matrix and iterative techniques. Using spectral analysis, I show that a closed-loop laser guide star multiconjugate adaptive optics control algorithm consisting of MVR cascaded with an integrator control law is unstable. To solve this problem, a computationally efficient pseudo-open-loop control (POLC) method was recently proposed. I give a theoretical proof of the stability of this method and demonstrate its superior performance and robustness against misregistration errors compared with conventional least-squares control. This can be accounted for by the fact that POLC incorporates turbulence statistics through its regularization term that can be interpreted as spatial filtering, yielding increased robustness to misregistration. For the Gemini-South 8-m telescope multiconjugate system and for median Cerro Pachon seeing, the performance of POLC in terms of rms wave-front error averaged over a 1-arc min field of view is approximately three times superior to that of a least-squares reconstructor. Performance degradation due to 30% translational misregistration on all three mirrors is approximately a 30% increased rms wave-front error, whereas a least-squares reconstructor is unstable at such a misregistration level.

Closed-loop stability and performance analysis of least-squares and minimum-variance control algorithms for multiconjugate adaptive optics.

We describe the purpose, theory, implementation and sample results of a wave optics propagation simulation developed to study multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAQ) for 4-10m class telescopes. This code was more specifically developed to assess the impact of diffraction effects and a variety of implementation error sources upon the performance of the Gemini-South MCAO system. These errors include: Hartmann sensing with extended and elongated laser guide stars, optical propagation effects through the optics and atmosphere, laser guide star (LGS) projection through the atmosphere, deformable mirror (DM) and wave front sensor (WFS) misregistration, and calibration for non-common path errors. The code may be run in either a wave optics or geometric propagation mode to allow the code to be anchored against linear analytical models and to explicitly evaluate the impact of diffraction effects. The code is written in MATLAB, and complete simulations of the Gemini-South MCAO design (including 3 deformable mirrors with 769 actuators, 5 LGS WFS with 1020 subapertures, 3 tip/tilt natural guide star (NGS) WFS, and 50 meter phase screens with 1/32nd meter resolution) are possible using a Pentium III but require 1 to 6 days. Sample results are presented for Gemini-South MCAO as well as simpler AO systems. Several possibilities for parallelizing the code for faster execution and the modeling of extremely large telescopes (ELT's) are discussed.

/pdf/wave-optics-propagation-code-for-multiconjugate-adaptive-1e9of7e9ec.pdf

Gregory Cochran

Papers

Wave optics propagation code for multiconjugate adaptive optics