Toward Strehl-optimizing adaptive optics controllers

Abstract

A main objective of adaptive optics is to maximize closed-loop Strehl, or, equivalently, minimize the statistical mean-square wavefront residual. Most currently implemented AO wavefront reconstructors and closed-loop control laws do not take into account either the correlation of the Kolmogorov wavefronts over time or the modified statistics of the residual wavefront in closed loop. There have been a number of attempts in the past to generate "predictive" controllers, which utilize wind speed and Cn2 profiles and incorporate one or two previous time steps. We present here a general framework for a dynamic controller/reconstructor design where the goal is to maximize mean closed-loop Strehl ratio over time using all previous data and exploiting the spatial-temporal statistics of the Kolmogorov turbulence and measurement noise.