Sodium wavelength lasers are critical to the next generation of adaptive optics for ground-based astronomical telescopes. Important issues are:
(in no particular order)
Numbers in the table are approximate or typical. See the references for more details. Please use standard Guidelines in reporting return measurements
Facility | Principal Investigators | Laser Maker and Type | Return / Watt (Details) | Average Power | Spot Size (apparent) | Pulse & Spectral Format | Web Link |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lick Mt. Hamilton | Claire Max, Don Gavel | LLNL Tunable Dye | 10 ph/s/cm2/W | 12 W | 2 arcsec | 100 ns, 11 kHz, 2 GHz EO modulated | LGS project at LLNL and instrumentation pages at Lick and SPIE paper |
Starfire Optical Range | Bob Fugate, Craig Denman | SOR Solid state, resonant sum-frequency generator | 100 ph/s/cm2/W seasonal average | 50 W | seeing limited 1.4-3 arcsec (site has r0=7.8cm avg) | CW 10 kHz line | SPIE article and Craig Denman's talk at the Nov 2006 LaserWorkshop |
W. M. Keck Observatory | Peter Wizinowich | LLNL Tunable Dye | 10 ph/s/cm2/W | 12-15 W | 1.8" x 2.3" (average stacked) | 100 ns, 25 kHz, 2 GHz EO modulated | K2LGSAO web, LGS Photometry and SPIE'06 paper (Table 1) |
Palomar | Richard Dekany, Ed Kibblewhite, Antonin Bouchez | University of Chicago Solid state sum-frequency mode-locked | 60-80 ph/s/cm2/W | 6-8 W | 1.8" FWHM arcsec in 1.0 arcsec V-band seeing | 1 ns micropulse inside 300 microsec bursts at 300 Hz repetition rate | instrumentation page at COO and note on guide star return flux |
Subaru | Masanori Iye, Yutaka Hayano | solid state sum-frequency | To be measured | 5.4 W at output of laser | To be measured | ~0.8 ns pulses, 143MHz rep rate, mode-locked (quasi-CW) 1.7GHz bandwidth | press release |
Gemini North | Francois Rigaut, Celine D'Orgeville | Lockheed-Martin Coherent Technologies diode-pumped solid state 1.06+1.32micron sum-frequency laser | 27photons/cm^2/s/W: photon return at the primary mirror of the Gemini North telescope, per laser power projected to the sky out of the LLT, with linear polarization (Note: later observed ~30% increase with circular polarization at zenith) | Photon return measurement made in May 2005, during season of lowest sodium abundance, with ~6W projected to the sky (Note: as of May 2009, typical is ~12 W at the ouput of the laser, ~11W projected to the sky, with BTO+LLT throughput ~90%) | 1.3 arcsec | 0.7 ns pulses, 76 MHz rep rate, CW mode-locked, 550MHz bandwidth | Altair LGS instrument page and laser commissioning news |
Very Large Telescope | Domenico Bonaccini Calia | Max Planck Institutes Tunable Dye | 54 ph/s/cm2/W | 10 W | 1.25 arcsec | CW 3x10 MHz separated by 110MHz | press release from VLT, laser specs from MPIE, SPIE article on first light |
Institution | Principal Investigators | Sponsor | Laser Type | Progress | Reference |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lockheed-Martin Coherent Technologies | Allen Tracy, Allen Hankla | AODP | Sum frequency solid state, 1319nm+1064nm into PPSLT, modular pulse format | 1.5 W / 10 W goal | SPIE article |
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | Dee Pennington, Jay Dawson | AODP and CfAO | Sum frequency fiber, 1583nm+938nm into PPSLT, modular pulse format, 500 MHz linewidth | 3.5 W / 5-10 W goal | SPIE article |
Lockheed-Martin Coherent Technologies | LMCT: Ian Lee; Keck: Sean Adkins; Gemini: Celine d'Orgeville | NSF/AURA for Keck I/Gemini South telescopes resp. | Sum frequency solid state, 1319nm+1064nm into LBO, 0.3 ns pulse every 12 ns (CW mode-locked) | As of Sep. 2009: 40W Keck laser and 50W GS laser demonstrated in the lab, Keck laser passed FAT at LMCT and delivered to WMKO, GS laser pending FAT at LMCT | SPIE article |
European Southern Observatory | Domenico Bonaccini Calia, Yan Feng, Luke Taylor | ESO | Frequency-doubled 1178 nm narrow-band Raman fiber amplifier | Demonstrated 50 W cw @ 589 nm | Optics Express paper Frontiers in Optics 2009, postdeadline paper |
Name | Institution | |
---|---|---|
Don Gavel | UC Santa Cruz | gavel@ucolick.org |