Laboratory for Adaptive Optics

Laboratory for Adaptive Optics UCO Lick Observatory University of California, Santa Cruz
UCO/Lick Observatory Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO) LAO Yearly Status Reports: 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 LAO Publications
	The Laboratory for Adaptive Optics enables hands-on exploratory research in the development of adaptive optics technology which will benefit future implementations of adaptive optics systems on astronomical telescopes

Project Posters

Lab Photos

Facilities Description

Projects

Extreme Adaptive Optics Planet Imager

Over 100 planets around nearby stars have been discovered through indirect means, however no instrument has yet observed an extra-solar planet by it's own light. For such imaging, high contrast imaging is necessary to separate the planet near from the glare of light from its parent star. "Extreme" adaptive optics (ExAO) achieves this high contrast by using an extraordinarily precise and high-speed adaptive optics system. Unlike the wide field (MCAO) approach, ExAO looks in only a narrow field around the parent star and uses the star's light as its wavefront reference beacon. High precision wavefront control is achieved with a micro electromechanical system (MEMS) deformable mirror. The LAO will develope a prototype ExAO system then follow on with building and commissioning a system for an 8-10 meter class telescope. Advanced work will include design and testing of even higher contrast instrument concepts for a 30 meter class telescope.

Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) testbed

For testing system concepts for wide-field adaptive optics systems for future 10-100 meter class telescopes. New technologies include the use of multiple laser guide stars in a tomographic reconstructor and the use of multiple deformable mirrors conjugate to layer heights in the atmosphere.

Adaptive Optics Component Testing
New concepts and materials for wavefront sensing and wavefront correction will be required for the next generation of adaptive optics instruments. We are collaborating with several researchers developing technology in the areas of high speed low noise wavefront sensor detectors, MEMS deformable mirrors, and tomographic reconstruction algorithms.

The Laboratory for Adaptive Optics is made possible through a generous donation from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Links

Documents Archive

Documentation, Software, Data Files (local access only)

Project Posters

Laboratory Photos

Just a plan...	Tables, and populating with equipment
Grand Opening	Grad Student working hard

Description of Facilities

Laboratory Facility	Present situation: ~300 sq ft in the Lick Optical Shops High bay plus ~500 sq ft in Thimann Laboratories Building By early 2005: 1900 sq ft in Thimann Laboratories Building in two separate rooms Lab area clean to class 10,000 standards Class 100 cleanroom area Temperature control Light control
Optical Benchs	18 x 4 ft granite optical table (ExAO testbed) 6 x 6 ft granite optical table (cleanroom/assembly/test area) 2 16 x 4 ft Newport optical tables (MCAO testbed, wavefront sensing and control experiments, interferometers)
Interferometers	Phase-shifting Diffraction Interferometer (PSDI) - ~1 nm rms absolute wavefront accuracy over a 10-20 mm area - ExAO prototype evaluation and calibration Zygo Fizeau Interferometer - 4" aperture with 6 x zoom, 1000x1000 resolution, 4" window and flat with lambda/20 certification - general purpose optical testing Polarization Quadrature Interferometer - high speed (30 Hz) phase determination on 20 mm square aperture - used for testing spatial light modulators
Deformable Mirrors	32 x 32 MEMS device (continuous face sheet) from Boston Micromachines - for the ExAO prototype 4 768 x 768 pixel liquid crystal spatial light modulators from Hamamatsu - surrogate DMs for the MCAO testbed Intellite 36 element membrane DM - for AO demonstration and controls research
Cameras	3 1024 x 1024 Dalsa 1M30 cameras - wavefront sensors for the MCAO testbed (up to 4 guidestars per camera) 2 additional 1024 x 1024 Dalsa 1M30 cameras - wavefront sensing in the ExAO prototype 1K x 1K CCD camera from Princeton Instruments with E2V CCD47-10 science grade chip - for far-field high-contrast measurements on the ExAO testbed
Wavefront Aberration Plates	Etched glass 150 x 150 mm area with Kolmogorov spectrum, 40 micron features (4K x 4K), 8 bit resolution, 25 micron peak optical path difference - for testing ExAO or MCAO systems with simulated atmospheric turbulence - we only have 2 of these now but plan to replicate them at various peak optical path specification for use as simulated atmospheric layers.
Computing	Quad 3.04 Gigahertz CPU with 8 GBy RAM, 4 MBytes cache - for real-time MCAO tomography and wavefront control. This is sufficient for 9 laser guidestars and 4 deformable mirrors with a 5 Hz control loop update rate. CPU idle time can be used for simulation runs.

Donald Gavel, Director, Laboratory for Adaptive Optics
gavel@ucolick.org