This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 8447, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, and Conference Committee listing.

ARGOS the Advanced Rayleigh guided Ground layer adaptive Optics System for the LBT (Large Binocular Telescope) is built by a German-Italian-American consortium. It will be a seeing reducer correcting the turbulence in the lower atmosphere over a field of 2' radius. In such way we expect to improve the spatial resolution over the seeing of about a factor of two and more and to increase the throughput for spectroscopy accordingly. In its initial implementation, ARGOS will feed the two near-infrared spectrograph and imager - LUCI I and LUCI II. The system consist of six Rayleigh lasers - three per eye of the LBT. The lasers are launched from the back of the adaptive secondary mirror of the LBT. ARGOS has one wavefront sensor unit per primary mirror of the LBT, each of the units with three Shack-Hartmann sensors, which are imaged on one detector. In 2010 and 2011, we already mounted parts of the instrument at the telescope to provide an environment for the main sub-systems. The commissioning of the instrument will start in 2012 in a staged approach. We will give an overview of ARGOS and its goals and report about the status and new challenges we encountered during the building phase. Finally we will give an outlook of the upcoming work, how we will operate it and further possibilities the system enables by design.

We have created a new autonomous laser-guide-star adaptive-optics (AO) instrument on the 60-inch (1.5-m) telescope at Palomar Observatory called Robo-AO. The instrument enables diffraction-limited resolution observing in the visible and near-infrared with the ability to observe well over one-hundred targets per night due to its fully robotic operation. Robo-AO is being used for AO surveys of targets numbering in the thousands, rapid AO imaging of transient events and long-term AO monitoring not feasible on large diameter telescope systems. We have taken advantage of cost-effective advances in deformable mirror and laser technology while engineering Robo-AO with the intention of cloning the system for other few-meter class telescopes around the world.

From the ardent bucklers used during the Syracuse battle to set fire to Romans’ ships to more contemporary piezoelectric deformable mirrors widely used in astronomy, from very large voice coil deformable mirrors considered in future Extremely Large Telescopes to very small and compact ones embedded in Multi Object Adaptive Optics systems, this paper aims at giving an overview of Deformable Mirror technology for Adaptive Optics and Astronomy. First the main drivers for the design of Deformable Mirrors are recalled, not only related to atmospheric aberration compensation but also to environmental conditions or mechanical constraints. Then the different technologies available today for the manufacturing of Deformable Mirrors will be described, pros and cons analyzed. A review of the Companies and Institutes with capabilities in delivering Deformable Mirrors to astronomers will be presented, as well as lessons learned from the past 25 years of technological development and operation on sky. In conclusion, perspective will be tentatively drawn for what regards the future of Deformable Mirror technology for Astronomy.

In order to prepare for the construction phase of the two Deformable Mirrors (DMs), which will be used in the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) first light Adaptive Optics (AO) system, Cilas has advanced the design of these two large size piezo DMs and has manufactured and tested a scaled demonstration prototype. The work done allowed significant reduction of the risks related to the demanding specifications of the TMT DMs; the main issues were: (i) Large pupil (up to 370 mm) and high order (up to 74x74); (ii) Relatively low operational temperature (DMs working at -30°C); (iii) New piezo material. It is important to develop such a prototype to take into account these three specifications all together (dimension, low temperature and new piezo material). The new prototype is a 6x60 actuators and has the same characteristics as the future TMT DMs. In this paper, we give the conclusions of the work through the presentation of the following items: (i) Design and finite element analysis of the two DMs and prototype; (ii) Test results obtained with the prototype with validation of the finite element analysis and compliance with the TMT AO specifications; (iii) Special focus on thermal behavior, actuator reliability and shape at rest stability.

A low-cost silicon unimorph deformable mirror (DM) with 214 actuators is presented. The finite element simulation indicates that the designed DM has an excellent correction performance for both low order and high order aberrations. The experimental actuator deflection is about 2μm at 100V. This DM has the potential to be used for astronomical adaptive optics.

Recently, Adaptive Secondary Mirrors showed excellent on-sky results in the Near Infrared wavelengths. They currently provide 30mm inter-actuator spacing and about 1 kHz bandwidth. Pushing these devices to be operated at visible wavelengths is a challenging task. Compared to the current systems, working in the infrared, the more demanding requirements are the higher spatial resolution and the greater correction bandwidth. In fact, the turbulence scale is shorter and the parameter variation is faster. Typically, the former is not larger than 25 mm (projected on the secondary mirror) and the latter is 2 kHz, therefore the actuator has to be more slender and faster than the current ones. With a soft magnetic composite core, a dual-stator and a single-mover, VRALA, the actuator discussed in this paper, attains unprecedented performances with a negligible thermal impact. Pre-shaping the current required to deliver a given stroke greatly simplifies the control system, whose output supplies the current generator. As the inductance depends on the mover position, the electronics of this generator, provided with an inductance measure circuit, works also as a displacement sensor, supplying the control system with an accurate feed-back signal. A preliminary prototype, built according to the several FEA thermo-magnetic analyses, has undergone some preliminary laboratory tests. The results of these checks, matching the design results in terms of power and force, show that the the magnetic design addresses the severe specifications.

Adaptive Optics observations have dramatically improved the quality and versatility of high angular resolution measurements of the center of our Galaxy. In this paper, we quantify the quality of our Adaptive Optics observations and report on the astrometric precision for the young stellar population that appears to reside in a stellar disk structure in the central parsec. We show that with our improved astrometry and a 16 year baseline, including 10 years of speckle and 6 years of laser guide star AO imaging, we reliably detect accelerations in the plane of the sky as small as 70 μas yr^-2 (~2.5 km s^-1 yr^-1) and out to a projected radius from the supermassive black hole of 1."5 (~0.06 pc). With an increase in sensitivity to accelerations by a factor of ~6 over our previous efforts, we are able to directly probe the kinematic structure of the young stellar disk, which appears to have an inner radius of 0."8. We find that candidate disk members are on eccentric orbits, with a mean eccentricity of < e > = 0.30 ± 0.07. Such eccentricities cannot be explained by the relaxation of a circular disk with a normal initial mass function, which suggests the existence of a top-heavy IMF or formation in an initially eccentric disk.

The paper motivates the science requirements for high-contrast imaging illustrated by actual observation results. After an introduction to the high-contrast-imaging problem composed of extreme adaptive optics, coronagraphy, wave-front control an post-processing, the state-of-the-art will be reviewed putting emphasis on existing instruments and those that are near completion: LBT-FLAO, Magellan Mag AO, Palomar P3K / P1640, Subaru SCExAO, Gemini GPI, and VLT SPHERE.

Adaptive Optics systems, today available on 8-10m class telescopes are playing a significant role in the study of our solar system bodies. We describe three main science cases i) small solar system bodies ii) satellites of giant planets iii) giant planets atmospheres. We describe recent results acquired with these systems in these fields. We discuss the limitation and potential of AO systems for these studies, and address the problem of observability specific to moving targets. The potential for planetary science of future and improved AO systems is described.

Laser Guide Star (LGS) Adaptive Optics (AO) on large telescopes has recently become a very productive science tool for the astronomical community. Astronomical objects can now be observed at an unprecedented resolution over much of the sky. The science enabled by LGS AO and the capabilities and limitations of these systems will be discussed, along with the lessons learned that can be applied to LGS AO systems on existing and planned telescopes.

We present a summary update of sodium laser guidestar technology, including an overview of the results from a series of Laser Guidestar Workshops hosted by the Center for Adaptive Optics over the past few years. There has been considerable advancement in the understanding of laser light interaction with mesospheric sodium which has an impact on the choice of laser systems where the objective is to produce the best wavefront measurement with a minimum of laser power and expense. We will also summarize our efforts on an NSF funded MRI program to build a high-Strehl AO system for imaging and spectroscopy covering the near IR science bands from 0.9 to 2.2 micron wavelength. The system includes a new 10 watt pulsed fiber laser developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory tuned in spectral and pulse format for optimum sodium return.

Large telescopes equipped with adaptive optics require 20-25W CW 589-nm sources with emission linewidths of ~5 MHz. These Guide Star (GS) lasers should also be highly reliable and simple to operate and maintain for many years at the top of a mountain facility. Under contract from ESO, industrial partners TOPTICA and MPBC are nearing completion of the development of GS lasers for the ESO VLT, with delivery of the first of four units scheduled for December 2012. We report on the design and performance of the fully-engineered Pre-Production Unit (PPU), including system reliability/availability analysis, the successfully-concluded qualification testing, long-term component and system level tests and long-term maintenance and support planning. The chosen approach is based on ESO's patented narrow-band Raman Fiber Amplifier (EFRA) technology. A master oscillator signal from a linearly-polarized TOPTICA 20-mW, 1178-nm CW diode laser, with stabilized emission frequency and controllable linewidth up to a few MHz, is amplified in an MPBC polarization-maintaining (PM) RFA pumped by a high-power 1120-nm PM fiber laser. With efficient stimulated Brillouin scattering suppression, an unprecedented 40W of narrow-band RFA output has been obtained. This is then mode-matched into a resonant-cavity doubler with a free-spectral-range matching the sodium D₂a to D₂b separation, allowing simultaneous generation of an additional frequency component (D₂b line) to re-pump the sodium atom electronic population. With this technique, the return flux can be increased without having to resort to electro-optical modulators and without the risk of introducing optical wave front distortions. The demonstrated output powers with doubling efficiencies >80% at 589 nm easily exceed the 20W design goal and require less than 700 W of electrical power. In summary, the fiber-based guide star lasers provide excellent beam quality and are modular, turn-key, maintenance-free, reliable, efficient, and ruggedized devices whose compactness allows installation directly onto the launch telescope structure.

We present laser results of OPS structures based on highly strained InGaAs quantum wells emitting at 1178nm and frequency doubled to produce high power, high beam quality laser radiation at 589nm. The laser architecture is the same as in our commercial offerings, allowing us to achieve the desired results with a system significantly simpler than alternative approaches.

Almost all sodium laser guide star (LGS) systems in the world are based on pulsed lasers. We review the relevant sodium physics and compare different laser pulse formats. Selected formats are discussed on the basis of numerical simulation results. One of the key findings is that the brightness of most existing LGS facilities could be boosted at, as we argue, reasonable expense. Recommendations are presented to enhance the LGS return flux and to design future LGS lasers, including those suitable for spot tracking in the mesosphere to mitigate the spot elongation problem.

GeMS, the Gemini Laser Guide Star Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics facility system, has seen first light in December 2011, and has already produced images with H band Strehl ratio in excess of 35% over fields of view of 85x85 arcsec, fulfilling the MCAO promise. In this paper, we report on these early results, analyze trends in performance, and concentrate on key or novel aspects of the system, like centroid gain estimation, on-sky non­ common path aberration estimation. We also present the first astrometric analysis, showing very encouraging results.

The ESO Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF) consists in an evolution of one of the ESO VLT unit telescopes to a laser driven adaptive telescope with a deformable mirror in its optical train. The project has completed the procurement phase and several large structures have been delivered to Garching (Germany) and are being integrated (the AO modules GRAAL and GALACSI and the ASSIST test bench). The 4LGSF Laser (TOPTICA) has undergone final design review and a pre-production unit has been built and successfully tested. The Deformable Secondary Mirror is fully integrated and system tests have started with the first science grade thin shell mirror delivered by SAGEM. The integrated modules will be tested in stand-alone mode in 2012 and upon delivery of the DSM in late 2012, the system test phase will start. A commissioning strategy has been developed and will be updated before delivery to Paranal. A substantial effort has been spent in 2011-2012 to prepare the unit telescope to receive the AOF by preparing the mechanical interfaces and upgrading the cooling and electrical network. This preparation will also simplify the final installation of the facility on the telescope. A lot of attention is given to the system calibration, how to record and correct any misalignment and control the whole facility. A plan is being developed to efficiently operate the AOF after commissioning. This includes monitoring a relevant set of atmospheric parameters for scheduling and a Laser Traffic control system to assist the operator during the night and help/support the observing block preparation.

CANARY is an on-sky demonstrator adaptive optics (AO) system that in 2010 provided the first on-sky demonstration of open-loop tomographic adaptive optics correction using natural guide stars (NGS). Phase B of the CANARY experiment aims to extend the instrument from its original configuration by also measuring wavefronts from four offaxis Rayleigh laser guide stars (LGS). This upgrade allows CANARY to perform tomographic wavefront sensing over a 2.5arcminute field of view using any mix of up to seven off-axis wavefront sensors (four LGS and three NGS) simultaneously. AO correction within CANARY is performed on-axis along a single line of sight using a 52-actuator deformable mirror being controlled in open-loop. Here we give an overview of the Phase B LGS system, discuss the calibration of a mixed NGS/LGS tomographic system and present the recent laboratory and on-sky results from the Phase B commissioning.

NACO is the famous and versatile diffraction limited NIR imager and spectrograph at the VLT with which ESO celebrated 10 years of Adaptive Optics. Since two years a substantial effort has been put in understanding and fixing issues that directly affect the image quality and the high contrast performances of the instrument. Experiments to compensate the non-common-path aberrations and recover the highest possible Strehl ratios have been carried out successfully and a plan is hereafter described to perform such measurements regularly. The drift associated to pupil tracking since 2007 was fixed in october 2011. NACO is therefore even more suited for high contrast imaging and can be used with coronagraphic masks in the image plane. Some contrast measurements are shown and discussed. The work accomplished on NACO will serve as reference for the next generation instruments on the VLT, especially the ones working at the diffraction limit and making use of angular differential imaging (i.e. SPHERE, VISIR, and possibly ERIS).

ESO's Multi-conjugate Adaptive-optics Demonstrator (MAD) was a prototype designed and built to demonstrate wide-field adaptive optics science on large telescopes. The outstanding results obtained during commissioning and guaranteed time observations (GTO) prompted ESO to issue and open call to the community for 23 science demonstration (SD) observing nights distributed in three runs (in order to provide access to the summer an winter skies). Thus, in total MAD was used for science for 33 nights including the 10 nights of GTO time. date, 19 articles in refereed journals (including one in Nature) have been published based fully or partially o MAD data. To the best of our knowledge, these are not only the first, but also the only scientific publication from MCAO instruments world-wide to date (at least in Astronomy). The scientific impact of these publication, as measured by the h-index, is comparable to that of other AO instruments on the VLT, although over the years these instruments have been allocated many more nights than MAD. In this contribution we present an overview of the scientific results from MAD and a more detailed discussion of the most cited papers.

We present the results from the commissioning of the Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI). Capable of delivering diffraction limited images in the near-infrared, over an 85′′ ×85′′ square field-of-view, GSAOI was designed for use with the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (GeMS) system in operation at the Gemini South Observatory. The instrument focal plane, covered by an array of four HAWAII-2RG detectors, contains 4080×4080 pixels and has a plate scale of 0.02′′ – thus capitalizing on the superb image quality delivered by both the all-refractive optical design of GSAOI and the Gemini South MCAO system. Here, we discuss our preliminary findings from the GSAOI commissioning, concentrating on detector characterization, on-sky performance and system throughput. Further specifics about the Gemini MCAO system can be found in other presentations at this conference.

To image faint substellar companions obscured by the stellar halo and speckles, scattered light from the bright primary star must be removed in hardware or software. We apply the "locally-optimized combination of images" (LOCI) algorithm to 1-minute Keck Observatory snapshots of GKM dwarfs in the Hyades using source diversity to determine the most likely PSF. We obtain a mean contrast of 10^-2 at 0".01, 10^-4 at <1", and 10^-5 at 5". New brown dwarf and low-mass stellar companions to Hyades primaries are found in a third of the 84 targeted systems. This campaign shows the efficacy of LOCI on snapshot imaging as well as on bright wide binaries with off-axis LOCI, reaching contrasts sufficient for imaging 625-Myr late-L/early-T dwarfs purely in post-processing.

We present a ground-based technique to detect or follow-up long-period exoplanets via precise relative astrometry of host stars using Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) on 8 meter telescopes equipped with diffractive masks. MCAO improves relative astrometry by sharpening PSFs, reducing the star centroiding error, and by providing a spatially stable, more easily modeled PSF. However, exoplanet mass determination requires multi-year reference grid stability of ~10-100 uas or nanometer-level stability on the long-term average of out-of-pupil phase errors, which is difficult to achieve with MCAO. The diffractive pupil technique calibrates dynamic distortion via extended diffraction spikes generated by a dotted primary mirror, which are referenced against a grid of background stars. We calculate the astrometic performance of a diffractive 8-meter telescope with diffraction-limited MCAO in K using analytical techniques and a simplified MCAO simulation. Referencing the stellar grid to the diffraction spikes negates the cancellation of Differential Tip/Tilt Jitter normally achieved with MCAO. However, due to the substantial gains associated with sharper, more stable PSFs, diffractive 8-m MCAO reaches ~ 4-6 μas relative astrometric error per coordinate in one hour on a bright target star (K ~ 7) in fields of moderate stellar density (~10 stars arcmin^-2). Final relative astrometric precision with MCAO is limited by atmospheric differential tip/tilt jitter.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the state of the art wavefront sensor detectors developments held in Europe for the last decade. The success of the next generation of instruments for 8 to 40-m class telescopes will depend on the ability of Adaptive Optics (AO) systems to provide excellent image quality and stability. This will be achieved by increasing the sampling, wavelength range and correction quality of the wave front error in both spatial and time domains. The modern generation of AO wavefront sensor detectors development started in the late nineties with the CCD50 detector fabricated by e2v technologies under ESO contract for the ESO NACO AO system. With a 128x128 pixels format, this 8 outputs CCD offered a 500 Hz frame rate with a readout noise of 7e-. A major breakthrough has been achieved with the recent development by e2v technologies of the CCD220. This 240x240 pixels 8 outputs EMCCD (CCD with internal multiplication) has been jointly funded by ESO and Europe under the FP6 programme. The CCD220 and the OCAM2 camera that operates the detector are now the most sensitive system in the world for advanced adaptive optics systems, offering less than 0.2 e readout noise at a frame rate of 1500 Hz with negligible dark current. Extremely easy to operate, OCAM2 only needs a 24 V power supply and a modest water cooling circuit. This system, commercialized by First Light Imaging, is extensively described in this paper. An upgrade of OCAM2 is foreseen to boost its frame rate to 2 kHz, opening the window of XAO wavefront sensing for the ELT using 4 synchronized cameras and pyramid wavefront sensing. Since this major success, new developments started in Europe. One is fully dedicated to Natural and Laser Guide Star AO for the E-ELT with ESO involvement. The spot elongation from a LGS Shack Hartman wavefront sensor necessitates an increase of the pixel format. Two detectors are currently developed by e2v. The NGSD will be a 880x840 pixels CMOS detector with a readout noise of 3 e (goal 1e) at 700 Hz frame rate. The LGSD is a scaling of the NGSD with 1760x1680 pixels and 3 e readout noise (goal 1e) at 700 Hz (goal 1000 Hz) frame rate. New technologies will be developed for that purpose: advanced CMOS pixel architecture, CMOS back thinned and back illuminated device for very high QE, full digital outputs with signal digital conversion on chip. In addition, the CMOS technology is extremely robust in a telescope environment. Both detectors will be used on the European ELT but also interest potentially all giant telescopes under development. Additional developments also started for wavefront sensing in the infrared based on a new technological breakthrough using ultra low noise Avalanche Photodiode (APD) arrays within the RAPID project. Developed by the SOFRADIR and CEA/LETI manufacturers, the latter will offer a 320x240 8 outputs 30 microns IR array, sensitive from 0.4 to 3.2 microns, with 2 e readout noise at 1500 Hz frame rate. The high QE response is almost flat over this wavelength range. Advanced packaging with miniature cryostat using liquid nitrogen free pulse tube cryocoolers is currently developed for this programme in order to allow use on this detector in any type of environment. First results of this project are detailed here. These programs are held with several partners, among them are the French astronomical laboratories (LAM, OHP, IPAG), the detector manufacturers (e2v technologies, Sofradir, CEA/LETI) and other partners (ESO, ONERA, IAC, GTC). Funding is: Opticon FP6 and FP7 from European Commission, ESO, CNRS and Université de Provence, Sofradir, ONERA, CEA/LETI and the French FUI (DGCIS).

This paper describes the design and testing of a prototype high frame rate CCD imager called the polar coordinate detector developed as part of a project led by the W. M. Keck Observatory (WMKO) and funded by the Adaptive Optics Development Program and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Project. The polar coordinate detector is designed to address the problem of adaptive optics (AO) laser guide star (LGS) spot image elongation in Shack Hartmann wavefront sensors for extremely large telescopes. The prototype detector, designated the CCID-61, was developed in collaboration with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The CCID-61 implements a detector for one quadrant (30 x 30 subapertures) of the planned 60 x 60 subaperture LGS wavefront sensors of the TMT early light AO system NFIRAOS. Testing of front illuminated, packaged detectors has been completed and performance results including read noise, readout speed, charge diffusion, and dark current are reported.

The Adaptive Optics Lucky Imager (AOLI) is a new instrument under development to demonstrate near diffraction limited imaging in the visible on large ground-based telescopes. We present the adaptive optics system being designed for the instrument comprising a large stroke deformable mirror, fixed component non-linear curvature wavefront sensor and photon-counting EMCCD detectors. We describe the optical design of the wavefront sensor where two photoncounting CCDs provide a total of four reference images. Simulations of the optical characteristics of the system are discussed, with their relevance to low and high order AO systems. The development and optimisation of high-speed wavefront reconstruction algorithms are presented. Finally we discuss the results of simulations to demonstrate the sensitivity of the system.

This paper summarizes the activities and the principal results achieved during the commissioning of the two Natural Guide Star (NGS) AO systems called FLAO#1 & 2 installed at the bent Gregorian focal stations of the 2x8.4m Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The commissioning activities of FLAO#1 took place in the period February 2010 - October 2011, while FLAO#2 commissioning started in December 2011 and should be completed by November 2012. The main results of the commissioning campaign are presented in terms of the H-band Strehl Ratio values achieved under different observing conditions. We will also describe the automatic procedures to configure and set-up the FLAO systems, and in particular the modal gain optimization procedure, which has been proven to be a very important one in achieving the nominal performance. Finally, some of the results achieved in two science runs using the near infra-red camera PISCES are briefly highlighted.

LINC-NIRVANA will employ four wave front sensors to realize multi-conjugate correction on both arms of a Fizeau interferometer for LBT. Of these, one of the two ground-layer wave front sensors, together with its infrared test camera, comprise a stand-alone test platform for LINC-NIRVANA. Pathfinder is a testbed for full LINC-NIRVANA intended to identify potential interface problems early in the game, thus reducing both technical, and schedule, risk. Pathfinder will combine light from multiple guide stars, with a pyramid sensor dedicated to each star, to achieve ground-layer AO correction via an adaptive secondary: the 672-actuator thin shell at the LBT. The ability to achieve sky coverage by optically coadding light from multiple stars has been previously demonstrated; and the ability to achieve correction with an adaptive secondary has also been previously demonstrated. Pathfinder will be the first system at LBT to combine both of these capabilities. Since reporting our progress at A04ELT2, we have advanced the project in three key areas: definition of specific goals for Pathfinder tests at LBT, more detail in the software design and planning, and calibration. We report on our progress and future plans in these three areas, and on the project overall.

The Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS} began its on-sky commissioning in January 20ll. The system provides high order wide-field corrections using a constellation of five Laser Guide Stars. In December 20ll, commissioning culminated in images with a FWHM of 80±2mas at 1.65 microns (H band} over an 87 x 87 arcsccond field of view. The first images have already demonstrated the scientific potential of GeMS, and after more than a year of commissioning GeMS is finally close to completion and ready for science. This paper presents a general status of the GeMS project and summarizes the achievements made during more than a year of commissioning. The characterization of GeMS performance is presented in a companion paper: "GeMS on-sky results" , R.igaut ct al. Here we report on the sub-systems' performance, discuss current limitations and present proposed upgrades. The integration of GeMS into the observatory operational scheme is detailed. Finally, we present the plans for next year's operations with GeMS.

The heart of the 6.5 Magellan AO system (MagAO) is a 585 actuator adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) with <1 msec response times (0.7 ms typically). This adaptive secondary will allow low emissivity and high-contrast AO science. We fabricated a high order (561 mode) pyramid wavefront sensor (similar to that now successfully used at the Large Binocular Telescope). The relatively high actuator count (and small projected ~23 cm pitch) allows moderate Strehls to be obtained by MagAO in the “visible” (0.63-1.05 μm). To take advantage of this we have fabricated an AO CCD science camera called "VisAO". Complete “end-to-end” closed-loop lab tests of MagAO achieve a solid, broad-band, 37% Strehl (122 nm rms) at 0.76 μm (i’) with the VisAO camera in 0.8” simulated seeing (13 cm ro at V) with fast 33 mph winds and a 40 m Lo locked on R=8 mag artificial star. These relatively high visible wavelength Strehls are enabled by our powerful combination of a next generation ASM and a Pyramid WFS with 400 controlled modes and 1000 Hz sample speeds (similar to that used successfully on-sky at the LBT). Currently only the VisAO science camera is used for lab testing of MagAO, but this high level of measured performance (122 nm rms) promises even higher Strehls with our IR science cameras. On bright (R=8 mag) stars we should achieve very high Strehls (>70% at H) in the IR with the existing MagAO Clio2 (λ=1-5.3 μm) science camera/coronagraph or even higher (~98% Strehl) the Mid-IR (8-26 microns) with the existing BLINC/MIRAC4 science camera in the future. To eliminate non-common path vibrations, dispersions, and optical errors the VisAO science camera is fed by a common path advanced triplet ADC and is piggy-backed on the Pyramid WFS optical board itself. Also a high-speed shutter can be used to block periods of poor correction. The entire system passed CDR in June 2009, and we finished the closed-loop system level testing phase in December 2011. Final system acceptance (“pre-ship” review) was passed in February 2012. In May 2012 the entire AO system is was successfully shipped to Chile and fully tested/aligned. It is now in storage in the Magellan telescope clean room in anticipation of “First Light” scheduled for December 2012. An overview of the design, attributes, performance, and schedule for the Magellan AO system and its two science cameras are briefly presented here.

The first of a new generation of high actuator density AO systems developed for large telescopes, PALM-3000 is optimized for high-contrast exoplanet science but will support operation with natural guide stars as faint as V ~ 18. PALM-3000 began commissioning in June 2011 on the Palomar 200" telescope and has to date over 60 nights of observing. The AO system consists of two Xinetics deformable mirrors, one with 66 by 66 actuators and another with 21 by 21 actuators, a Shack-Hartman WFS with four pupil sampling modes (ranging from 64 to 8 samples across the pupil), and a full vector matrix multiply real-time system capable of running at 2KHz frame rates. We present the details of the completed system, and initial results. Operating at 2 kHz with 8.3cm pupil sampling on-sky, we have achieved a K-band Strehl ratio as high as 84% in ~1.0 arcsecond visible seeing.

Perturbations affecting image formation on ground-based telescopes are composed of signals that are not only generated by the atmosphere. They often include vibrations induced by wind excitation on the system's structure, or induced by other sources of excitation like cryo-coolers, shutters, etc. Using state-space control design techniques (e.g., LQG control), efficient perturbation compensation can be obtained in adaptive optics systems. This requires in return an accurate dynamical perturbation model with manageable complexity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how tip/ tilt state-space models can be constructed and identified from wavefront sensor (WFS) measurements and used for tip/ tilt correction. Several off-the-shelf time-domain identification approaches are considered, ranging from techniques such as subspace identification to extended Kalman filter. Results are compared with controllers that do not account for vibrations, like an integrator or an MMSE reconstructor. Performance improvement is illustrated by replay with on-sky data sets from Gemini South (GeMS and Altair).

While it is attractive to integrate a deformable mirror (DM) for adaptive optics (AO) into the telescope itself rather than using relay optics within an instrument, the resulting large DM can be expensive, particularly for extremely large telescopes. A low-cost approach for building a large DM is to use voice-coil actuators, and rely on feedback from mechanical sensors to improve the dynamic response of the mirror sufficiently so that it can be used in a standard AO control system. The use of inexpensive voice-coil actuators results in many lightly- damped structural resonances within the desired control bandwidth. We present a robust control approach for this problem, and demonstrate performance in a closed-loop AO simulation, incorporating realistic models of low-cost actuators and sensors. The first contribution is to demonstrate that high-bandwidth active damping can be robustly implemented even with non-collocated sensors, by relying on the "acoustic limit" of the structure where the modal bandwidth exceeds the modal spacing. Next we introduce a novel local control approach, which significantly improves the high spatial frequency performance relative to collocated position control, but without the robustness challenges associated with a global control approach. The combination of these "inner" control loops results in DM command response that is demonstrated to be sufficient for integration within an AO system.

Reduction of tip and tilt vibrations at the Gemini South MCAO System (GeMS) is addressed in this paper. A frequency framework for the synthesis of controllers is described, with particular emphasis on the search for better closed-loop performances by minimizing a H₂ norm of the tilt residuals. Previous results have shown that modeling the turbulence via identification tools using standard AR or Laplace representations can lead to non-optimal solutions, resulting in excessive rejection of certain frequencies or an unbalanced residual spectrum due to poor modeling of vibrations. In this novel approach we reconstruct the open loop slopes (pseudo-open-loop) from on-sky data and then perform a fine tuning of the controller by finding the parameters that minimize the variance of residuals during a sequence of closed-loop runs with increasing controller complexity. Although the method is not optimal, it effectively rejects the main vibrations in the loop and it also improves the overall performance of the system. The method is compared to two standard integrators: one with fixed gain and the other with optimized integral gain. Results show substantial improvements of this new method when compared to the classical integrator.

In modern adaptive optics systems, lightly damped sinusoidal oscillations resulting from telescope structural vibrations have a significant deleterious impact on the quality of the image collected at the detector plane. Such oscillations are often at frequencies beyond the bandwidth of the wave-front controller that therefore is either incapable of rejecting them or might even amplify their detrimental impact on the overall AO performance. A technique for the rejection of periodic disturbances acting at the output of unknown plants, which has been recently presented in literature, has been adapted to the problem of rejecting vibrations in AO loops. The proposed methodology aims at estimating phase and amplitude of the harmonic disturbance together with the response of the unknown plant at the frequency of vibration. On the basis of such estimates, a control signal is generated to cancel out the periodic perturbation. Additionally, the algorithm can be easily extended to cope with unexpected time variations of the vibrations frequency by adding a frequency tracking module based either on a simple PLL architecture or on a classical extended Kalman filter. Oversampling can be also easily introduced to efficiently correct for vibrations approaching the sampling frequency. The approach presented in this contribution is compared against a different algorithm for vibration rejection available in literature, in order to identify drawbacks and advantages. Finally, the performance of the proposed vibration cancellation technique has been tested in realistic scenarios defined exploiting tip/tilt measurements from MACAO and NACO

LGS wavefront sensing is a topic of importance for future ELTs. However, the elongation effect makes this task particularly difficult on a large apertures, and require large format detectors. An alternative solution is to use quad-cell types wavefront sensors : either shack-hartmann, or pyramid (using only 4 pixels per phase measurement), or yaw (an optical differentiation wavefront sensor proposed recently, also using 4 pixels, like the pyramid). We compare the performance of these devices and we develop a common model of operation, so that their behavior can be directly compared and their differences easily enlightened.

High-contrast imaging is a growing observational technique aimed at discovering and characterizing extrasolar planets. The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is designed to achieve contrast ratios of 10^-6 - 10^-7 and requires unprecedented wavefront correction and coronagraphic control of diffraction. G PI is a facility instrument now undergoing integration and testing and is scheduled for first light on the 8-m Gemini South telescope towards the end of 2012. In this paper, we focus on the wavefront sensing and correction aspects of the instrument. To measure the wavefront, GPI combines a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor and a high-accuracy infrared interferometric wavefront calibration system. The Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor uses 1700 subapertures to precisely sample the wavefront at 1.5 kHz and features a spatial filter to prevent aliasing. The wavefront calibration system measures the slower temporal frequency errors as well as non-common path aberrations. The wavefront correction is performed using a two-stage adaptive optics system employing a 9x9 piezoelectric deformable mirror and a 43x43 actuators MEMS deformable mirror operating in a woofer-tweeter configuration. Finally, an image sharpening technique is used to further increase the contrast of the final image. In this paper, we describe the three wavefront sensing methods and how we combine their respective information to achieve the best possible contrast.

Direct detection and spectral characterization of extra-solar planets is one of the most exciting but also challenging areas in modern astronomy. The challenge is due to the very large contrast between the host star and the planet at very small angular separations. SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research in Europe [1]) is a secondgeneration instrument for the ESO VLT dedicated to this scientific objective. It combines an extreme adaptive optics system [2], various coronagraphic devices and a suite of focal instruments providing imaging, integral field spectroscopy and polarimetric capabilities in the visible and near-infrared spectral ranges. The limitation of such a high contrast imaging system is mainly driven by the presence of intensity residual in the scientific focal plane, caused by uncorrected quasi-static optical aberrations upstream of the coronagraphic mask. The measurement and compensation of these aberrations is mandatory in order to reach the level of contrast requested by exoplanet imaging. We present in this paper the final experimental validation of the baseline method developed in the framework of SPHERE instrument for the conpensation of NCPA. The method is based on a differential measurement with phase diversity, and a compensation with an optimised modification of reference slopes.

We present the results of a sky source based, phase diversity experiment at the W. M. Keck Observatory to retrieve the global wavefront static aberration from the telescope primary mirror to the science imager (NIRC2). The context of this study is a point spread function reconstruct (PSF-R) project for the Keck-II and Gemini- North adaptive optics systems. We demonstrate that if we select couples of in/out-of-focus PSF with identical seeing (determined with a deformable mirror based seeing monitor), retrieving the global static wavefront from AO corrected sky images is indeed possible. A sensitivity analysis shows that the reconstructed wavefront accuracy is very sensitive to errors in the knowledge of the system's optical parameters, and an accuracy of less than 1% is required. Recommendations for an accurate sky-based phase diversity static wavefront reconstruction are given, as well as our plan for the next steps of this project at the W. M. Keck Observatory.

The GMT laser tomography adaptive optics (LTAO) system design has a truth sensor guiding on a natural guide star. The truth sensor is used to measure telescope segment piston errors and measure slowly varying non- common path aberrations. The challenge lies in measuring segment piston using faint natural guide stars and the wavefront delivered by the LTAO system. This requires a sensor that can make a direct phase measurement. It is demonstrated that an infrared, AO-corrected, unmodulated pyramid or roof wavefront sensor can make the required measurements at 10 Hz for stars brighter than magnitude 17 at H- or K-band.

Nowadays, the adaptive optics (AO) system is of fundamental importance to reduce the effect of atmospheric turbulence on the images formed on large ground telescopes. In this paper the AO system takes advantage of the knowledge of the current turbulence characteristics, that are estimated by data, to properly control the deformable mirrors. The turbulence model considered in this paper is based on two assumptions: considering the turbulence as formed by a discrete set of layers moving over the telescope lens, and each layer is modeled as a Markov-Random-Field. The proposed Markov-Random-Field approach is exploited for estimating the layers' characteristics. Then, a linear predictor of the turbulent phase, based on the computed information on the turbulence layers, is constructed. Since scalability and low computational complexity of the control algorithms are important requirements for real AO systems, the computational complexity properties of the proposed model are investigated. Interestingly, the proposed model shows a good scalability and an almost linear computational complexity thanks to its block diagonal structure. Performances of the proposed method are investigated by means of some simulations.

Adaptive optics (AO) systems of modern telescopes use laser guide stars, produced by resonant excitation of sodium atoms in the mesosphere at around 92 km. Wavefront sensor subapertures, if sufficiently far away from the primary mirror center, resolve the internal structure of the sodium layer. The variability of this structure is caused by the influence of gravity waves and wind shear turbulence. The relevance of such dynamics to AO has been investigated over the past four years. A high-resolution lidar system, employed at the 6-m liquid mirror telescope, which is located near Vancouver, Canada, has been used to study mesospheric dynamics, such as the temporal behavior of the mean altitude. The main results from this study have been published elsewhere and will be summarized here. Along with the temporal variability, the mean altitude on horizontal scales of order IOs of meters has been studied by introducing a tip/tilt stage in the experimental setup. This enables us to swap the laser pulse within a 1 arcmin field of view. The horizontal mean altitude structure function has been measured on 10 observing nights between July and August 2011. Results reveal severe structural differences and a strong horizontal anisotropy. Individual laser beacons in a laser guide star asterism will therefore have at the same time significantly different focus heights. By propagating this 2d structure function to the entrance pupil of a 39 m telescope, we derive a differential focus wavefront error map.

A lunar scintillometer, LuSci, is an inexpensive and robust instrument which deploys a linear array of photodiodes pointed toward the moon to measure scintillation produced by atmospheric turbulence. Covariances between the signals from the photodiodes are analyzed to derive estimates of the turbulence profile within a few hundred meters above the ground. Instrument parameters and phase of the moon are taken into account. This method has been used for site testing and monitoring. We present the development of a new LuSci instrument used to validate the ground-layer turbulence distribution measured from the laser wavefront sensor signals of the Ground Layer Adaptive Optics system at the MMT. The near-simultaneous measurements are used to characterize the performance of the GLAO system. We describe the instrument, its operation, approaches to data reduction, and use in performance characterization of a GLAO system.­

The problem of the wind prole restoration from Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor1 (MASS) scintillation indices was studied. We show that we are able to obtain wind proles on the standard MASS altitude grid with reasonable accuracy and altitudinal resolution. Online data processing is also available. Existing MASS data archives can be reprocessed using method of short exposure time.

We present in this paper an analysis of several tip-tilt on-sky data registered on adaptive optics systems installed on different telescopes (Gemini South, William Herschel Telescope, Large Binocular Telescope, Very Large Tele­ scope, Subaru). Vibration peaks can be detected, and it is shown that their presence and location may vary, and that their origin is not always easy to determine. Mechanical solution that have been realized to mitigate vibrations are presented. Nevertheless, residual vibrations may still affect the instruments' performance, ranging from narrow high frequency vibration peaks to wide low frequency windshake-type perturbations. Power Spectral Densities (PSDs) of on-sky data are presented to evidence these features. When possible, indications are given regarding the gain in performance that could be achieved with adequate controllers accounting for vibration mitigation. Two examples of controller identification and design illustrate their ability to compensate for various types of disturbances (turbulence, windshake, vibration peaks, ...),showing a significant gain in performance.

Advanced wide-field AO systems, such as Multi-Conjugate AO (MCAO) systems often require many static optical elements (mirror and lenses) in addition to the active ones (deformable mirrors). These static elements induce additional wave-front errors due to random fabrication errors such as polishing errors. For ELT-size AO systems, these optical elements can be very large, and thus their cost and availability critically depends on how of much fabrication error can be tolerated. Therefore, a rigorous tolerance analysis is absolutely critical. Requirements can, in principle be relaxed, on account that fabrication errors with spatial scales larger than the inter-actuator spacing of the deformable mirrors (DMs) can be corrected. However, this process is significantly complicated by the fact that these optical elements are often conjugated far away from the DMs, and therefore DM correction cannot be achieved over a wide field of view (FOV). In this paper, we present our tolerance analysis in the context of NFIRAOS, the first-light MCAO system for the Thirty Meter Telescope. We start from two top-level error budgets: the “on-axis” error budget, which specifies the acceptable residual wave-front error in the narrow 17”x17” science FOV; and the “off-axis” error budget, which specifies the acceptable residual wave-front error at the edge of the 2’ diameter technical FOV. The former directly relates to science image quality, whereas the latter directly relates to sky coverage. For different assumptions on the spatial power spectrum of the polishing errors, we derive the requirements on each optical element in NFIRAOS using a Monte-Carlo analysis of the predicted off-axis performance of the system with on axis AO correction.

The Subaru adaptive optics system (AO188) is a 188-element curvature sensor adaptive optics system that is operated in both natural and laser guide star modes. AO188 is installed at Nasmyth platform of the 8m Subaru telescope as a facility AO system. The laser guide star mode for AO188 has been commissioned and offered for use in science operation since 2011. The performance of AO188 in the laser guide star mode has been well verified from on-sky data obtained with the infrared camera and spectrograph (IRCS). In this paper, we describe the operation procedure and observing efficiency for the laser guide star mode. We also show the result of the on-sky performance evaluation of AO188 in the laser guide star mode and the characterization of the laser guide star, together with the obtained science results.

Ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO) has the potential to dramatically increase the efficiency and capabilities of existing ground-based telescopes over a broad range of astronomical science. Recent studies of the optical turbulence above several astronomical sites (e.g. Mauna Kea, Paranal, and Antarctica) show that GLAO can be extended to fields of view of several tens of arcminutes in diameter, larger than previously thought, with angular resolutions close to the freeatmosphere seeing. This is a pivotal result since GLAO science cases benefit from the largest possible corrected fields of view. The corrected areal field of a GLAO system is potentially 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than has been demonstrated to date. The 'Imaka team is working toward an instrument that takes advantage of the one-degree field afforded by Mauna Kea. In this paper we summarize the design/simulation work to date along with our plan to develop an instrument that reaches for this wide field of view.

The Giant Magellan Telescope adaptive optics system will be an integral part of the telescope, providing laser guide star generation, wavefront sensing, and wavefront correction to most of the currently envisioned instruments. The system will provide three observing modes: Natural Guidestar AO (NGSAO), Laser Tomography AO (LTAO), and Ground Layer AO (GLAO). Every AO observing mode will use the telescope’s segmented adaptive secondary mirror to deliver a corrected beam directly to the instruments. High-order wavefront sensing for the NGSAO and LTAO modes is provided by a set of wavefront sensors replicated for each instrument and fed by visible light reflected off the cryostat window. An infrared natural guidestar wavefront sensor with open-loop AO correction is also required to sense tip-tilt, focus, segment piston, and dynamic calibration errors in the LTAO mode. GLAO mode wavefront sensing is provided by laser guidestars over a ~5 arcminute field of view, and natural guidestars over wider fields. A laser guidestar facility will project 120 W of 589 nm laser light in 6 beacons from the periphery of the primary mirror. An off-axis phasing camera and primary and secondary mirror metrology systems will ensure that the telescope optics remain phased. We describe the system requirements, overall architecture, and innovative solutions found to the challenges presented by high-order AO on a segmented extremely large telescope. Further details may be found in specific papers on each of the observing modes and major subsystems.

We provide an update on the development of the first light adaptive optics systems for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) over the past two years. The first light AO facility for TMT consists of the Narrow Field Infra-Red AO System (NFIRAOS) and the associated Laser Guide Star Facility (LGSF). This order 60 × 60 laser guide star (LGS) multi-conjugate AO (MCAO) architecture will provide uniform, diffraction-limited performance in the J, H, and K bands over 17-30 arc sec diameter fields with 50 per cent sky coverage at the galactic pole, as is required to support TMT science cases. Both NFIRAOS and the LGSF have successfully completed design reviews during the last twelve months. We also report on recent progress in AO component prototyping, control algorithm development, and system performance analysis.

Adaptive optics systems based on sodium Laser Guide Stars may exploit Natural Guide Stars to solve intrinsic limitations of artificial beacons, such as tilt indetermination and, in the case of Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics, tilt anisoplanatism. Natural Guide Stars are also required to mitigate the impact of the sodium layer structure and variability: on a 40-meter class telescope, as a consequence of the perspective elongation effect and of the finite Laser Guide Star Wavefront Sensor field of view, spurious wavefront aberrations are generated. The sodium layer may also have transverse structures leading to significant differential effects among Laser Guide Stars. All these issues show up in MAORY, a concept of a Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics module for the European Extremely Large Telescope. Starting from the analysis of the input perturbations to be measured, we derive preliminary requirements for the Natural Guide Star Wavefront Sensor and describe its conceptual design. The Wavefront Sensor uses three natural stars; each wavefront sensor probe consists of a fast tip-tilt and focus channel and a slow channel for monitoring the aberrations induced by the sodium layer. The dual-channel design allows the efficient exploitation of the few natural stars typically available in the field of view, while providing a way to monitor the potential anisoplanatism due to the differential sodium effects among the LGSs.

The paper presents the preliminary design of theNat ural Guide Star Wavefront Sensor for the single conjugate AO system of the GMT telescope. The NGS Wavefront Sensor (NGWS), already identified as a pyramid sensor, will be in charge of the entire wavefront error measurement namely atmospheric turbulence and telescope aberrations, including the segment differential piston error. The paper describes the WFS opto-mechanical design with particular emphasis on the WFS board. Numerical simulations of the GMT NGS AO system are performed taking into account the main characteristics of the considered WFS unit. The simulations take into account correction of the atmospheric perturbation and control of the differential pistons of the GMT segments.

NFIRAOS is the first-light adaptive optics system planned for the Thirty Meter Telescope, and is being designed at the National Research Council of Canada's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. NFIRAOS is a laser guide star multiconjugate adaptive optics system - a practical approach to providing diffraction limited image quality in the NIR over a 30" field of view, with high sky coverage. This will enable a wide range of TMT science that depends upon the large corrected field of view and high precision astrometry and photometry. We review recent progress developing the design and conducting performance estimates for NFIRAOS.

Laser Tomographic systems, such as ATLAS, will rely on natural guide stars to sense low order aberrations. LIFT is a novel focal plane wavefront sensor (WFS), performing a maximum likelihood phase retrieval on a single image, with better sensitivity than a 2x2 Hartmann-Shack WFS. We first present a characterization of LIFT’s noise propagation performance and working domain by means of simulations. We then show the results of experiments on ONERA’s test bench for LIFT. These experiments validate the estimation of tip/tilt and focus, in monochromatic light and in large bandwidth (for a spectral resolution of 3), as well as the expected noise propagation. They also confirm the validity of the imaging models used for simulations. Finally, we focus on the preparation of an on-sky validation based on Gemini Multi-conjugate adaptive optics System (GeMS) calibration data at Gemini Southern Observatory.

With two to three deformable mirrors, three Natural Guide Stars (NGS) and five sodium Laser Guide Stars (LGS), the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (Gemini MCAO a.k.a. GeMS) will be the first facility-class MCAO capability to be offered for regular science observations starting in 2013A. The engineering and science commissioning phase of the project was kicked off in January 2011 when the Gemini South Laser Guide Star Facility (GS LGSF) propagated its 50W laser above the summit of Cerro Pachón, Chile. GeMS commissioning has proceeded throughout 2011 and the first half of 2012 at a pace of one 6- to 10-night run per month with a 5-month pause during the 2011 Chilean winter. This paper focuses on the LGSF-side of the project and provides an overview of the LGSF system and subsystems, their top-level specifications, design, integration with the telescope, and performance throughout commissioning and beyond. Subsystems of the GS LGSF include: (i) a diode-pumped solid-state 1.06+1.32 micron sum-frequency laser capable of producing over 50W of output power at the sodium wavelength (589nm); (ii) Beam Transfer Optics (BTO) that transport the 50W beam up the telescope, split the beam five-ways and configure the five 10W beams for projection by the Laser Launch Telescope (LLT) located behind the Gemini South 8m telescope secondary mirror; and (iii) a variety of safety systems to ensure safe laser operations for observatory personnel and equipment, neighbor observatories, as well as passing aircrafts and satellites.

A microsecond pulsed sodium has been developed in TIPC laser physics research center, the power of this laser is around 20W and the length of the pulse is about 120 microseconds. In 2011, an experiment to project the TIPC prototype laser to the sky and measure the photon returns of the laser has been held on the 1.8 meter telescope in Yunnan observation site. During the sky test, an artificial sodium beacon has been successfully generated, and the brightness of the sodium beacon is around 8.7M in V Band. In the 2012 test campaign, the sodium column density facility has mounted on the telescope to test the local sodium density and structure and the sodium density test result is around 2.2x10¹³/m².

Laser-guide-star-based multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) systems require natural guide-stars to measure tilt and tilt-anisoplanatism modes. This paper focuses on the parameter optimisation of sub-optimal integrator-based controllers using a single and a double integrator (baseline option) to drive the low-order loop of NFIRAOS, the 1st light MCAO system for the Thirty-Meter Telescope. The minimum-variance (MV) controller is outlined, against which integrators are compared. Simulations using ~500 asterisms considered in sky-coverage simulations for the TMT show that the double integrator gives competitive results thoughout the range of asterisms and magnitudes considered. It is shown that using an optimal modal gain integrator can further improve the performance with respect to using an averaged gain for all of part of the modes. However, it is outperformed by the MV controller, in particular for asterisms with relatively dim stars (lower bound is magnitude 22 in H-band) requiring low temporal frame-rates (as low as 16Hz) to integrate more flux. Over all the cases tested, an average of ~100 nm rms (23 nm rms median) improvement can be achieved with the MV. The MV further increases by 15% the probability of working below the 50th-percentile residual of the double integrator.

Optimal control laws for new Adaptive Optics (AO) concepts in astronomy require the implementation of techniques intended for real time identification of the atmospheric turbulence. Contrary to the Optimized Modal Gain Integrator (OMGI), it has been proved that the Kalman Filter (KF) based optimal control law enables estimation and prediction of the turbulent phase from the measurements and corrects efficiently the different modes of this phase in the case of a wide field tomographic AO system. But using such kind of processes, for any Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), will be extremely difficult because of the numerical complexity of the computations involved in the matrices calculations as well as the recording of large covariance matrices. A new control law is proposed, based on the Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (ETKF) and its efficient variation, Local ETKF (recently developed for geophysics applications), allowing to dramatically reduce the computation burden for an ELT implementation and also to deal with non stationary behaviors of the turbulence.

We explore the extension of predictive control techniques to multi-guide star, multi-layer tomographic wavefront measurement systems using a shift-and-average correction scheme that incorporates wind velocity and direction. In addition to reducing temporal error budget terms, there are potentially additional benefits for tomographic AO systems; the combination of wind velocity information and phase height information from multiple guide stars breaks inherent degeneracies in volumetric tomographic reconstruction, producing a reduction in the geometric tomographic error. In a tomographic simulation of an 8-meter telescope with 3 laser guide stars over 2 arcminute diameter, we find that tracking organized wind motion as it flows into metapupil regions sampled by only one guide star improves layer estimates beyond the guide star radius, allowing for an expansion of the field of view. For this case, we demonstrate improvement of layer phase estimates of 3% to 12%, translating into potential gains in the MOAO field of regard area of up to 40%. The majority of the benefits occur in regions of the metapupil sampled by only 1-2 LGS's downwind at high altitudes.

Wide Field Adaptive Optics (WFAO) concepts, such as Ground Layer AO (GLAO), Laser Tomography AO (LTAO) or Multi-Conjugate AO (MCAO) are currently under study in the perspective of future ELT instruments. In that context, the experimental validation of the various smart control solutions proposed by several teams in the past years is now essential. In this paper we present experimental validation and comparison of different control laws for LTAO concept from the simplest least-square to the optimal Linear Quadratic Gaussian solutions including Virtual DeformableMirror and Pseudo-closed loop approaches. This study is performed using the Onera WFAO facility (HOMER bench). The four control laws are tested and compared in terms of performance and robustness. In particular, low and high noise conditions are explored, for several different fields of views. We also highlight their experimental optimization by the tuning of parameters in control laws.

ELTs will offer angular resolution around 10mas in the near-IR and unprecedented sensitivity. While direct imaging of Earth-like exoplanets around Sun-like stars will stay out of reach of ELTs, we show that habitable planets around nearby M-type main sequence stars can be directly imaged. For about 300 nearby M dwarfs, the angular separation at maximum elongation is at or beyond 1 ë/D in the near-IR for an ELT. The planet to star contrast is 1e-7 to 1e-8, similar to what the upcoming generation of Extreme-AO systems will achieve on 8-m telescopes, and the potential planets are sufficiently bright for near-IR spectroscopy. We show that the technological solutions required to achieve this goal exist. For example, the PIAACMC coronagraph can deliver full starlight rejection, 100% throughput and sub-ë/D IWA for the EELT, GMT and TMT pupils. A closely related coronagraph is part of SCExAO on Subaru. We conclude that large ground-based telescopes will acquire the first high quality spectra of habitable planets orbiting M-type stars, while future space mission(s) will later target F-G-K type stars.

In 2009 our group started the integration of the SCExAO project, a highly flexible, open platform for high contrast imaging at the highest angular resolution, inserted between the coronagraphic imaging camera HiCIAO and the 188-actuator AO system of Subaru. In its first version, SCExAO combines a MEMS-based wavefront control system feeding a high performance PIAA-based coronagraph. This paper presents some of the images obtained during the first engineering observations conducted with SCExAO in 2011: diffraction limited imaging in the visible as well as PIAA coronagraphy in the near infrared; along with the wavefront control strategies to be tested on sky during the next round of SCExAO observations, scheduled in the Fall 2012.

Direct detection and spectral characterization of extra-solar planets is one of the most exciting and challenging areas in modern astronomy due to the very large contrast between the host star and the planet at very small angular separations. SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research in Europe) is a second-generation instrument for the ESO VLT dedicated to this scientific objective. It combines an extreme adaptive optics system, various coronagraphic devices and a suite of focal instruments providing imaging, integral field spectroscopy and polarimetry capabilities in the visible and near-infrared spectral ranges. The extreme Adaptive Optics (AO) system, SAXO, is the heart of the SPHERE system, providing to the scientific instruments a flat wavefront corrected from all the atmospheric turbulence and internal defects. We present an updated analysis of SAXO assembly, integration and performance. This integration has been defined in a two step process. While first step is now over and second one is ongoing, we propose a global overview of integration results. The main requirements and system characteristics are briefly recalled, then each sub system is presented and characterized. Finally the full AO loop first performance is assessed. First results demonstrate that SAXO shall meet its challenging requirements.

Project 1640, a high-contrast spectral-imaging effort involving a coordinated set of instrumentation and software, built at AMNH, JPL, Cambridge and Caltech, has been commissioned and is fully operational. This novel suite of instrumentation includes a 3388+241-actuator adaptive optics system, an optimized apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph, an integral field spectrograph, and an interferometric calibration wave front sensor. Project 1640 is the first of its kind of instrumentation, designed to image and characterize planetary systems around nearby stars, employing a variety of techniques to break the speckle-noise barrier. It is operational roughly one year before any similar project, with the goal of reaching a contrast of 10^-7 at 1 arcsecond separation. We describe the instrument, highlight recent results, and document on-sky performance at the start of a 3-year, 99-night survey at the Palomar 5-m Hale telescope.

We present a promising approach to the extremely fast sensing and correction of small wavefront errors in adaptive optics systems. As our algorithm's computational complexity is roughly proportional to the number of actuators, it is particularly suitable to systems with 10,000 to 100,000 actuators. Our approach is based on sequential phase diversity and simple relations between the point-spread function and the wavefront error in the case of small aberrations. The particular choice of phase diversity, introduced by the deformable mirror itself, minimizes the wavefront error as well as the computational complexity. The method is well suited for high­ contrast astronomical imaging of point sources such as the direct detection and characterization of exoplanets around stars, and it works even in the presence of a coronagraph that suppresses the diffraction pattern. The accompanying paper in these proceedings by Korkiakoski et al. describes the performance of the algorithm using numerical simulations and laboratory tests.

The direct imaging of planets around nearby stars is exceedingly difficult. Only about 14 exoplanets have been imaged to date that have masses less than 13 times that of Jupiter. The next generation of planet-finding coronagraphs, including VLT-SPHERE, the Gemini Planet Imager, Palomar P1640, and Subaru HiCIAO have predicted contrast performance of roughly a thousand times less than would be needed to detect Earth-like planets. In this paper we review the state of the art in exoplanet imaging, most notably the method of Locally Optimized Combination of Images (LOCI), and we investigate the potential of improving the detectability of faint exoplanets through the use of advanced statistical methods based on the concepts of the ideal observer and the Hotelling observer. We propose a formal comparison of techniques using a blind data challenge with an evaluation of performance using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) and Localization ROC (LROC) curves. We place particular emphasis on the understanding and modeling of realistic sources of measurement noise in ground-based AO-corrected coronagraphs. The work reported in this paper is the result of interactions between the co-authors during a week-long workshop on exoplanet imaging that was held in Squaw Valley, California, in March of 2012.

The adaptive optics (AO) simulations at the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) have been carried out using the efficient, C based multi-threaded adaptive optics simulator (MAOS, http://github.com/lianqiw/maos). By porting time-critical parts of MAOS to graphical processing units (GPU) using NVIDIA CUDA technology, we achieved a 10 fold speed up for each GTX 580 GPU used compared to a modern quad core CPU. Each time step of full scale end to end simulation for the TMT narrow field infrared AO system (NFIRAOS) takes only 0.11 second in a desktop with two GTX 580s. We also demonstrate that the TMT minimum variance reconstructor can be assembled in matrix vector multiply (MVM) format in 8 seconds with 8 GTX 580 GPUs, meeting the TMT requirement for updating the reconstructor. Analysis show that it is also possible to apply the MVM using 8 GTX 580s within the required latency.

Anisoplanatism is a primary source of photometric and astrometric error in single-conjugate adaptive optics. We present initial results of a project to model the off-axis optical transfer function in the adaptive optics system at the Keck II telescope. The model currently accounts for the effects of atmospheric anisoplanatism in natural guide star observations. The model for the atmospheric contribution to the anisoplanatic transfer function uses contemporaneous MASS/ DIMM measurements. Here we present the results of a validation campaign using observations of naturally guided visual binary stars under varying conditions, parameterized by the r₀ and θ₀ parameters of the C²_n atmospheric turbulence profile. We are working to construct a model of the instrumental field-dependent aberrations in the NIRC2 camera using an artificial source in the Nasmyth focal plane. We also discuss our plans to extend the work to laser guide star operation.

It is a widely accepted conjecture that the width of the incoherent halo in an adaptive optics point-spread function (PSF) should decrease with the level of correction. Using end-to-end simulations we prove that this is not the case and the halo is actually increasing in width, albeit at a decreasing overall brightness level as must be the case with increasing correction. The simulations span the cases of: seeing-limited, partial-, and high-order adaptive-optics (AO) correction. We show the relationship between the theory of partially-developed speckle and the observed statistical behavior of on-axis PSF intensity. Finally, we check the results of the simulations with real data obtained using the 3.5m Starfire Optical Range telescope located in New Mexico, US.

The thirty meter telescope (TMT) has the potential to find new planetary systems and to study them in greater details. It could also possibly image super-Earth planets around the closest stars or still accreting distant protoplanets around stars in very young star forming regions. Since no first generation dedicated exoplanet finding instrument has been selected for the TMT, initial direct exoplanet imaging will have to rely on the NFIRAOS facility adaptive optics (AO) system and IRIS spectro-imaging near-infrared (NIR) camera. End­ to-end Fresnel NFIRAOS simulations are presented using their current optical designs to evaluate the system multi-wavelength high-contrast imaging capabilities. Long exposures have been simulated using the expected AO-corrected phase screens and the estimated speckle lifetime. It is shown that NFIRAOS/IRIS may achieve contrasts close to the Gemini planet imager (GPI, an optimized NIR planet-finding instrument that will soon be installed on the Gemini South 8-m telescope), but needs to rely on multi-wavelength processing (by a factor 50) to achieve that goal, a challenging requirement. Without a coronograph and a better treatment of the in-band static speckle noise, it is unlikely that NFIRAOS/ IRIS will be able to achieve GPI-like contrasts at very small inner working angles, which is potentially accessible with a large 30-meter telescope. However, TMT, with its bigger aperture and better angular resolution, along with the current NFIRAOS/ IRIS designs, should be able to acquire higher SNR spectra and achieve three times better astrometric accuracy than GPI for medium to bright planets, resulting in better atmospheric characterization and faster orbital parameter determination of a sample of GPI planets.

Sparse Aperture-Mask Interferometry (SAM or NRM) behind Adaptive Optics (AO) has now come of age, with more than a dozen astronomy papers published from several 5-10m class telescopes around the world. I will describe the reasons behind its success in achieving relatively high contrasts ( 1000:1 at lambda/ D) and repeatable binary astronomy at the diffraction limit, even when used behind laser-guide star adaptive optics. Placed within the context of AO calibration, the information in an image can be split into pupil-plane phase, Fourier amplitude and closure-phase. It is the closure-phase observable, or its generalisation to Kernel phase, that is immune to pupil-plane phase errors at first and second-order and has been the reason for the technique's success. I will outline the limitations of the technique and the prospects for aperture-masking and related techniques in the future.

We discuss in this paper the last results of our adaptive optics point spread function reconstruction (PSF-R) project at theW. M. Keck Observatory. Objective of the project are recalled, followed by a short reintroduction of the basis of the method. Amongst the novelties, a method for a drastic reduction of the number of the so-called U_i,j functions for any pupil shape and an arbitrary number of actuators is presented, making the current PSF-R technique easily applicable to extremely large telescopes AO systems. Our success at reconstructing the PSF in bright natural guide star (NGS) conditions is revisited in details and confirmed. First results on PSF-R with faint NGS are presented and it is shown that our reconstructed PSF Strehl ratio drops with the NGS magnitude basically like the measured sky performance. These preliminary but encouraging results, in real conditions, can be considered as a validation of our PSF-R approach. Plans for the next steps of the project are discussed at the end of this progress report.

In adaptive optics systems employing laser guide stars, the tip/tilt contribution to the long exposure point spread function must be estimated separately from the high-order tip/tilt removed point spread function because this component is estimated separately from a single or multiple low-order natural guide star wavefront sensors. This paper investigates this problem for laser guide star multi conjugate adaptive optics. The approach is based on the scheme developed by Flicker in 2003 [1], and consists in post-processing the measurement covariance matrix of multiple low-order natural guide star wavefront sensors controlling tip/tilt and tilt anisoplanatism. An innovative simulation model based "balanced" algorithm is introduced to capture error terms not accounted for in Flicker's algorithm. Sample enclosed energy results for the Thirty Meter Telescope multi conjugate adaptive optics system demonstrate the superiority of the balanced method and call for further analytical work and experimental validation.

The identification of spatial covariance matrices is required in adaptive optics in order to perform tomographic reconstruction with optimal estimators. We use on-sky measurements from Canary, the on-sky demonstrator of MOAO for EAGLE, to study the statistical convergence of the spatial covariance of Shack-Hartmann measurements. We describe a new, faster, analytical approximated model for this spatial covariance, and finally bring into light a new procedure for model identification, reducing the tomographic error. We quantify the gain brought by the new approach on both numerical simulations and on-sky data.

The AO system calibration is usually done with a dedicated setup during daytime. Here we present results of two alternative techniques as the synthetic and the on-sky interaction matrix calibration. In both cases we created matrices controlling 400 modes of the LBT-FLAO system. We present here the performances reached on-sky at LBT compared with those obtained with the standard calibration. The described techniques allow calibrating the AO system without any dedicated hardware. This is particularly attractive for systems that require complex calibration setup such as those with a convex adaptive secondary like the MMT and the planned VLT AOF.

The adaptive optics (AO) on the European Extremely Large Telescope, as well as earlier pathfinders like the Adaptive Optics Facility, at the Very Large Telescope in 2014, will no longer be stationary systems. AO is no longer isolated on a bench; some elements are directly in the optical train of the telescope, suffering environment and constrains changes during the observations. To guarantee good performance at any observing time, we investigate a self-calibration strategy. We focus here on one of the most challenging aspects: the identification of system parameters during closed-loop observations without introducing any additional disturbance. Such problem is known in the identification theory to be difficult to solve. We have recently presented (Béchet et al., AO4ELT2 Conference, 2011) an identification method for this, with promising results obtained in simulations. To consolidate these advances, we come back in the present paper to the equations and provide a theoretical analysis to justify the choice of the algorithm. We highlight the benefit of using incremental data and commands to decorrelate the disturbance. We also present 2 implementations of the method, currently studied at the European Southern Observatory.

The AOF project will transform one of the VLT UT into an adaptive telescope. This configuration presents new challenges but also provides new opportunities for the integration of the Adaptive Optics in the global telescope control scheme and performance improvement. In particular the Interaction Matrix between the Deformable Mirror and Wavefront Sensor of the system cannot be measured on an artificial source, as there is no intermediate focal plane ahead of the Deformable Mirror. The baseline for the AOF is to use a Pseudo-Pynthetic IM, i.e. computer-generated but finetuned thanks to measured parameters of the system: Influence Functions, WFS characteristics, mis-alignments. This paper presents the control strategy of the AOF, the simulation code that will be used to generate the PSIM for the AOF, and the ideas for updating the Control Matrix depending on the estimation of the DM/WFS mis-registration.

Adaptive Optics Real-Time Control systems for next generation ground-based telescopes demand significantly higher processing power, memory bandwidth and I/O capacity on the hardware platform than those for existing control systems. We present a FPGA based high-performance computing platform that is developed at Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory and is very suitable for the applications of Adaptive Optics Real-Time Control systems. With maximum of 16 computing blades, 110 TeraMAC/s processing power, 1.8Terabyte/s memory bandwidth and 19.5 Terabit/s I/O capacity, this ATCA architecture platform has enough capacity to perform pixel processing, tomographic wave-front reconstruction and deformable mirror fitting for first and second generation AO systems on 30+-meter class telescopes. As an example, we demonstrate that with only one computing blade, the platform can handle the real time tomography needs of NFIRAOS, the Thirty-Meter Telescope first light facility Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system. The High- Performance FPGA platform is integrated with Board Software Development Kit to provide a complete and fully tested set of interfaces to access the hardware resources. Therefore the firmware development can be focused on unique, userspecific applications.

This paper reflects, from a computational perspective, on the experience gathered in designing and implementing realtime control of the PALM-3000 adaptive optics system currently in operation at the Palomar Observatory. We review the algorithms that serve as functional requirements driving the architecture developed, and describe key design issues and solutions that contributed to the system’s low compute-latency. Additionally, we describe an implementation of dense matrix-vector-multiplication for wavefront reconstruction that exceeds 95% of the maximum achievable bandwidth on NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX GPU.

The VLT Deformable secondary is planned to be installed on the VLT UT#4 as part of the telescope conversion into the Adaptive Optics test Facility (AOF). The adaptive unit is based on the well proven contactless, voice coil motor technology that has been already successfully implemented in the MMT, LBT and Magellan adaptive secondaries, and is considered a promising technical choice for the forthcoming ELT-generation adaptive correctors, like the E-ELT M4 and the GMT ASM. The VLT adaptive unit has been recently assembled after the completion of the manufacturing and modular test phases. In this paper, we present the most relevant aspects of the system integration and report the preliminary results of the electromechanical tests performed on the unit. This test campaign is a typical major step foreseen in all similar systems built so far: thanks to the metrology embedded in the system, that allows generating time-dependent stimuli and recording in real time the position of the controlled mirror on all actuators, typical dynamic response quality parameters like modal settling time, overshoot and following error can be acquired without employing optical measurements. In this way the system dynamic and some aspect of its thermal and long term stability can be fully characterized before starting the optical tests and calibrations.

Glassy thin shells are key components for the development of adaptive optics and are part of future and innovative projects such as ELT. However, manufacturing thin shells is a real challenge. Even though optical requirements for the front face - or optical face - are relaxed compared to conventional passive mirrors, requirements concerning thickness uniformity are difficult to achieve. In addition, process has to be completely re-defined as thin mirror generates new manufacturing issues. In particular, scratches and digs requirement is more difficult as this could weaken the shell, handling is also an important issue due to the fragility of the mirror. Sagem, through REOSC program, has recently manufactured different types of thin shells in the frame of European projects - E-ELT M4 prototypes and VLT Deformable Secondary Mirror (VLT DSM).

In ELTs the larger size of the aperture will translates into different categories of problems and different kind of solutions. The concept of Global Multi Conjugated Adaptive Optics is here introduced. In this, the wavefront sensing is extended to a much larger Field of View, practically limited by the telescope optics or optomechanics and by the limit given by the coverage of the metapupil at the highest altitude of interest. The correction of these layers is employed in a numerical fashion and the information is retrieved in order to compensate for a much limited Field of View. All this, being done in a layer oriented fashion, does allow for a simplified treatment of the Signal to Noise Ratio and to an estimate of the performances in the plot h vs. spatial scales where layers and the related Kolmogorov distributed turbulence are plotted. Once this information is retrieved it is fed back into the existing Deformable Mirror with a back-projection that allow for the most efficient way in terms of coverage of the spatial frequencies. The nature of the closed- vs open-loop of such an approach is also briefly discussed. The aim of a sky coverage and of performances getting closer or exceeding the ones provided by Laser Guide Stars can be at hands.

We present a wavefront sensor design for the purpose of measuring post-AO corrected light, especially in the cases of high-Strehl and when using natural guide stars. It is inspired by holographic design principles and oers approximately two orders of magnitude increase in sensitivity over a conventional Shack-Hartmann design. The theoretical design and that of a laboratory prototype are presented, together with simulation results for a case-study of sinusoidal phase and the corresponding results from a laboratory experiment.

A phase-shifting Zernike wavefront sensor has distinct advantages over other types of wavefront sensors. Chief among them are: 1) improved sensitivity to low-order aberrations and 2) efficient use of photons (hence reduced sensitivity to photon noise). We are in the process of deploying a phase-shifting Zernike wavefront sensor to be used with the real-time adaptive optics system for Palomar. Here we present the current state of the Zernike wavefront sensor to be integrated into the high-order adaptive optics system at Mount Palomar’s Hale Telescope.

We have constructed an adaptive optics system incorporating a holographic wavefront sensor with the autonomous closed-loop control of a MEMS deformable mirror (DM). HALOS incorporates a multiplexed holographic recording of the response functions of each actuator in a deformable mirror. On reconstruction with an arbitrary input beam, pairs of focal spots are produced. By measuring the relative intensities of these spots a full measurement of the absolute phase can be constructed. Using fast photodiodes, direct feedback correction can be applied to the actuators.

The ATST Wavefront Correction Control System (WCCS) is the high-level control software for the Wavefront Correction (WFC) system to be employed in the new Advanced Technology Solar Telescope. The WFC is comprised of a set of subsystems: the high-order adaptive optics system for correction of wavefront aberrations, an active optics system that calculates corrections for low-order distortions caused by optical misalignments, a context viewing camera to provide quick-look quality analysis data, and a limb guider for positioning an occulting mask on the solar disk. The operation and configuration of the WFC is determined by the operational modes set by the operator. The Telescope Control System (TCS) sends these operational modes to the WCCS, which is the interface between the telescope and the WFC. The WCCS adopts a modular approach to the organization of the software. At the top-level there is a high-level management controller which is the interface to the TCS. This management controller is responsible for the validation of commands received from the TCS and for the coordination and synchronization of the operation of the WFC subsystems. Separate subsystem controllers manage the functional behavior of each WFC subsystem. In this way the WCCS provides a consistent interface to the TCS for each subsystem while synchronizing and coordinating the components of the Wavefront Correction system.

The four meter Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) adaptive optics (AO) system will require at least twenty-four times the real time processing power as the Dunn Solar Telescope AO system. An FPGA solution for ATST AO real time processing is being pursued instead of the parallel DSP approach used for the Dunn AO76 system. An analysis shows FPGAs will have lower latency and lower hardware cost than an equivalent DSP solution. Interfacing to the proposed high speed camera and the deformable mirror will be simpler and have lower latency than with DSPs. This paper will discuss the current design and progress toward implementing the FPGA solution.

Robo-AO is the first astronomical laser guide star adaptive optics (AO) system designed to operate completely independent of human supervision. A single computer commands the AO system, the laser guide star, visible and near-infrared science cameras (which double as tip-tip sensors), the telescope, and other instrument functions. Autonomous startup and shutdown sequences as well as concatenated visible observations were demonstrated in late 2011. The fully robotic software is currently operating during a month long demonstration of Robo- AO at the Palomar Observatory 60-inch telescope.

We report recent development in real-time control system of 188-element Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics for Subaru Telescope (Subaru LGSAO-188). The current status is reported, and plans for improvements to enhance the performance are reported as well. A major item is to invoke the optimum gain control, which is being implemented on the data handling system and to be attached to the real time control system. We also explain about other new features on the control system including general response acquisition system as an expansion of response matrix acquisition system.

SPARTA, the ESO Standard Platform for Adaptive optics Real Time Applications, is the high-performance, real-time computing platform serving three major 2nd generation instruments at the VLT (SPHERE, GALACSI and GRAAL) and possibly a fourth one (ERIS). SPARTA offers a very modular and fine-grained architecture, which is generic enough to serve a variety of AO systems. It includes the definitions of all the interfaces between those modules and provides libraries and tools for their implementation and testing, as well as a mapping to technologies capable of delivering the required performance. These comprise, amongst others, VXS communication, FPGA-aided wavefront processing, command time filtering and I/O, DSP-based wavefront reconstruction, DDS data distribution and multi-CPU number crunching, most of them innovative with respect to ESO standards in use. A scaled-down version of the platform, namely SPARTA-Light, will employ a subset of the SPARTA technologies to implement the AO modules for the VLT auxiliary telescopes (NAOMI) and is the baseline for a new VLTI instrument (GRAVITY). For the above instrument portfolio, SPARTA provides also a complete implementation of the AO application, with features customised to each instrument's needs and specific algorithms. In this paper we describe the architecture of SPARTA, its technology choices, functional units and test tools. End-to-end as well as individual module performance data is provided for the XAO system delivered to SPHERE. Initial performance results are presented for the GALACSI and GRAAL systems under development.

EDIFISE is a technology demonstrator instrument developed at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), intended to explore the feasibility of combining Adaptive Optics with attenuated optical fibers in order to obtain high spatial resolution spectra at the surroundings of a star, as an alternative to coronagraphy. A simplified version with only tip tilt correction has been tested at the OGS telescope in Observatorio del Teide (Canary islands, Spain) and a complete version is intended to be tested at the OGS and at the WHT telescope in Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, (Canary Islands, Spain). This paper describes the FPGA-based real time control of the High Order unit, responsible of the computation of the actuation values of a 97-actuactor deformable mirror (11x11) with the information provided by a configurable wavefront sensor of up to 16x16 subpupils at 500 Hz (128x128 pixels). The reconfigurable logic hardware will allow both zonal and modal control approaches, will full access to select which mode loops should be closed and with a number of utilities for influence matrix and open loop response measurements. The system has been designed in a modular way to allow for easy upgrade to faster frame rates (1500 Hz) and bigger wavefront sensors (240x240 pixels), accepting also several interfaces from the WFS and towards the mirror driver. The FPGA-based (Field Programmable Gate Array) real time controller provides bias and flat-fielding corrections, subpupil slopes to modal matrix computation for up to 97 modes, independent servo loop controllers for each mode with user control for independent loop opening or closing, mode to actuator matrix computation and non-common path aberration correction capability. It also provides full housekeeping control via UPD/IP for matrix reloading and full system data logging.

EAGLE is a proposed multi-IFU instrument for the E-ELT, with a full multi-object AO system. Current baseline designs for this MOAO system include up to six laser guide stars and five natural guide stars. Twenty science channels will be corrected using a corresponding number of independent 84x84 actuator deformable mirrors, though the applied corrections will not be observed by the wavefront sensors. In addition to this, the E-ELT M4 mirror is also part of the AO system, and will operate in closed loop. One possible design for a real-time control system for EAGLE is presented here, based on the Durham AO Real-time Control platform (DARC). Using hardware that we have available, we will present performance results based on the implementation of a sub-set of EAGLE, a single IFU channel. This can then be replicated twenty times to obtain a full EAGLE real-time control system, since each channel is independent. We also consider the implementation of real-time control systems for other ELT instruments, and how far our approach can take us.

The Adaptive Optics System at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory consists of two Adaptive Secondary (ASM) mirrors and two Pyramid Wavefront sensors. The first ASM/Pyramid pair has been commissioned and is being used for science operation using the NIR camera PISCES on the right side of the binocular telescope. The left side ASM/Pyramid system is currently being commissioned, with completion scheduled for the Fall of 2012. We will discuss the operation of the first Adaptive Optics System at the LBT Observatory including interactions of the AO system with the telescope and its TCS, observational modes, user interfaces, observational scripting language, time requirement for closed loop and offsets and observing efficiency.

The interferometric imager LINC-NIRVANA will use pyramid wavefront-sensors for multi-conjugated adaptive optics (MCAO). A derotator will produce a static field on the pyramids, but a rotating pupil image on the CCD. For long exposure times, we have to take into account this effect to command the deformable mirror properly by changing the command matrix on the fly. We reproduce in a laboratory set-up this configuration to test different methods for compensating for this effect. We present the results obtained and the optimal solution we have selected.

Control software for adaptive optics systems is mostly custom built and very specific in nature. We have developed FOAM, a modular adaptive optics framework for controlling and simulating adaptive optics systems in various environments. Portability is provided both for different control hardware and adaptive optics setups. To achieve this, FOAM is written in C++ and runs on standard CPUs. Furthermore we use standard Unix libraries and compilation procedures and implemented a hardware abstraction layer in FOAM. We have successfully implemented FOAM on the adaptive optics system of ExPo - a high-contrast imaging polarimeter developed at our institute - in the lab and will test it on-sky late June 2012. We also plan to implement FOAM on adaptive optics systems for microscopy and solar adaptive optics. FOAM is available* under the GNU GPL license and is free to be used by anyone.

Many concepts of Wide Field AO (WFAO) systems are under development, especially for Extremely Large Tele­ scopes (ELTs) instruments. Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO) is one of these WFAO concepts, well suited to high redshifts galaxies observations in very wide Field of View (FoV). The E-ELT instrument EAGLE will use this approach. CANARY, the on-sky pathfinder for MOAO, has obtained the first compensated images on Natural Guide Stars (NGSs) at the William Herschel Telescope in September 2010. We present in this paper numerical and experimental validations of a Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control. This is an appealing strategy that provides an optimal control in the sense of minimum residual phase variance. It also provides a unified formalism that allows accounting for multi WaveFront Sensors (WFSs) channels, both on Laser Guide Stars (LGSs) and NGSs, and for various disturbance sources (turbulence, vibrations). We show how the specific MOAO CANARY configuration can be embedded in a state-space framework. We present experimental laboratory validations that demonstrate the gain brought by tomographic LQG control for CANARY, together with comparative simulations. Model identification necessary for a robust on-sky operation is discussed.

In the context of adaptive optics (AO), Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control uses the state-feedback of the atmospheric distortion wavefront estimate. Such estimate is obtained from a Kalman filter which incorporates a model of the atmospheric distortion wavefront. We analyze the performance and the robustness of LQG- based control compared to classic integral control, by the means of end-to-end simulations and by considering different levels of wavefront sensor (WFS) noise.

Diffraction limited resolution adaptive optics (AO) correction in visible wavelengths requires a high performance control. In this paper we investigate infinite impulse response filters that optimize the wavefront correction: we tested these algorithms through full numerical simulations of a single-conjugate AO system comprising an adaptive secondary mirror with 1127 actuators and a pyramid wavefront sensor (WFS). The actual practicability of the algorithms depends on both robustness and knowledge of the real system: errors in the system model may even worsen the performance. In particular we checked the robustness of the algorithms in different conditions, proving that the proposed method can reject both disturbance and calibration errors.

Control system design for adaptive optics is becoming more complex and sophisticated with increasing demands on the compensation of atmospheric turbulence. Contemporary controllers used in adaptive optics systems are optimised in the sense of a cost function (linear quadratic regulators) or to a worst case scenario (robust H_∞ controllers). Prediction, to some extent, can be incorporated into the controllers using the Kalman filter and a model of the atmospheric turbulence. Despite the growing number of publications on adaptive optics control systems, only the unconstrained case is usually considered. Accounting for the physical constraints of the adaptive optics system components, such as limited actuator stroke, still represents a problem. As a possible solution, one can consider constrained receding horizon control (RHC), also known as Model Predictive Control (MPC). The ability of RHC to handle constraints and make predictions of the future control signals makes it attractive for application in astronomical adaptive optics. The main potential difficulty with the application of RHC is its heavy computational load. This paper presents preliminary results on numerical simulations of an adaptive optics system controlled by constrained RHC. In particular, the case of output disturbance rejection is considered. The results of numerical simulations are provided. Finally, methods for improving the computational performance of constrained receding horizon controllers in adaptive optics are also discussed.