We briefly recall the principle of the polychromatic laser guide star, which aims at providing measurements of the tilt of incoming wavefronts with a 100% sky coverage, We describe the main results of the feasibility study of this concept undertaken within the ELP-OA porgramme. We finally summarize our plans for a full demonstrator at Observatoire de Haute-Provence.
We developed a code aimed at determining the laser parameters leading to the maximum return flux of photons at 0.33 micrometers for a polychromatic sodium Laser Guide Star. This software relies upon a full 48-level collisionless and magnetic-field-free density-matrix description of the hyperfine structure of Na and includes Doppler broadening and Zeeman degeneracy. Experimental validation of BEACON was conducted on the SILVA facilities and will also be discussed in this paper.
We describe the current status of the ELP-OA project in which we try to demonstrate in practice that it is possible to measure the tilt of a wave front using only a polychromatic laser guide star and no natural guide star. The first phase of ELP-OA, consisting of feasibility experiments, has recently been completed successfully. This paper provides an overview over the results of this first phase and over the continuation of the ELP-OA project.
Adaptive optics at astronomical telescopes aims at correcting in real time the phase corrugations of incoming wavefronts caused by the turbulent atmosphere, as early proposed by Babcock. Measuring the phase errors requires a bright source located within the isoplanatic patch of the program source. The probability that such a reference source exists is a function of the wavelength, of the required image quality (Strehl ratio), of the turbulence optical properties, and of the direction of the observation. It turns out that the sky coverage is disastrously low in particular in the visible wavelength range where, unfortunately, the gain in spatial resolution brought by adaptive optics is the largest. Foy and Labeyrie have proposed to overcome this difficulty by creating an artificial point source in the sky in the direction of the observation relying on the backscattered light due to a laser beam. This laser guide star (hereinafter referred to as LGS) can be bright enough to allow us to accurately measure the wavefront phase errors, except for two modes which are the piston (not relevant in this case) and the tilt. Pilkington has emphasized that the round trip time of the laser beam to the mesosphere, where the LGS is most often formed, is significantly shorter than the typical tilt coherence time; then the inverse-return-of-light principle causes deflections of the outgoing and the ingoing beams to cancel. The apparent direction of the LGS is independent of the tilt. Therefore the tilt cannot be measured only from the LGS. Until now, the way to overcome this difficulty has been to use a natural guide star to sense the tilt. Although the tilt is sensed through the entire telescope pupil, one cannot use a faint source because $APEX 90% of the variance of the phase error is in the tilt. Therefore, correcting the tilt requires a higher accuracy of the measurements than for higher orders of the wavefront. Hence current adaptive optics devices coupled with a LGS face low sky coverage. Several methods have been proposed to get a partial sky coverage for the tilt. The only one providing us with a full sky coverage is the polychromatic LGS (hereafter referred to as PLGS). We present here a progress report of the R&D program Etoile Laser Polychromatique et Optique Adaptative (ELP-OA) carried out in France to develop the PLGS concept. After a short recall of the principles of the PLGS, we will review the goal of ELP-OA and the steps to get over to bring it into play. We finally shortly described the effort in Europe to develop the LGS.
Adaptive optics at astronomical telescopes aims at correcting in real time the phase corrugations of incoming wavefronts caused by the turbulent atmosphere, as early proposed by Babcock. Measuring the phase errors requires a bright source, which is located within the isoplanatic patch of the program source. The probability that such a reference source exists is a function of the wavelength of the observation, of the required image quality (Strehl ratio), of the turbulence optical properties, and of the direction of the observation. Several papers have addressed the problem of the sky coverage as a function of these parameters (see e.g.: Le Louarn et al). It turns out that the sky coverage is disastrously low in particular in the short (visible) wavelength range where, unfortunately, the gain in spatial resolution brought by adaptive optics is the largest. Foy and Labeyrie have proposed to overcome this difficulty by creating an artificial point source in the sky in the direction of the observation relying on the backscattered light due to a laser beam. This laser guide star (hereafter referred to as LGS) can be bright enough to allow us to accurately measure the wavefront phase errors, except for two modes which are the piston (which is not relevant in this case) and the tilt. Pilkington has emphasized that the round trip time of the laser beam to the mesosphere, where the LGS is most often formed, is significantly shorter than the typical tilt coherence time; then the inverse-return- of-light principle causes deflections of the outgoing and the ingoing beams to cancel. The apparent direction of the LGS is independent of the tilt. Therefore the tilt cannot be measured only from the LGS. Until now, the way to overcome this difficulty has been to use a natural guide star to sense the tilt. Although the tilt is sensed through the entire telescope pupil, one cannot use a faint source because approximately equals 90% of the variance of the phase error is in the tilt. Therefore, correcting the tilt requires a higher accuracy of the measurements than for higher orders of the wavefront. Hence current adaptive optics devices coupled with a LGS face low sky coverage. Several methods have been proposed to get a partial or total sky coverage for the tilt, such as the dual adaptive optics concept, the elongation perspective method, or the polychromatic LGS (hereafter referred to as PLGS). We present here a progress report of the R&D program Etoile Laser Polychromatique et Optique Adaptative (ELP-OA) carried out in France to develop the PLGS concept. After a short recall of the principles of the PLGS, we will review the goal of ELP-OA and the steps to get over to bring it into play.
KEYWORDS: Laser guide stars, Telescopes, Sodium, Stars, Global system for mobile communications, Oscillators, Wavefronts, Adaptive optics, Calibration, Photometry
We present results from measurements of the return flux from a polychromatic sodium laser guide star produced in Pierrelatte, France during the PASS-2 experiment. In the experiment, photometry of light at 330, 569, 589, and 589.6 nm emitted by mesospheric sodium under two-color laser excitation (569 and 589 nm) was performed. The variation of oscillator and laser configurations as well as simultaneous measurements of the atmospheric coherence length and the mesospheric sodium density permit a comparison of the results with atomic physics models. Using the results, we can determine the setup that produces the maximum return flux from the polychromatic laser guide star. The knowledge gained will be used to aid the ELP- OA project, which has as its goal the design, testing, and implementation of an adaptive optics system that uses a polychromatic laser guide star for wave front tilt measurements.
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