WIVERN: a laboratory experiment for testing novel laser-based wavefront sensing techniques

Bharmal, Nazim A.; Bramall, David; Calcines Rosario, Ariadna Z.; Morris, Timothy J.; Schmoll, Jürgen; Staykov, Lazar

Abstract

WIVERN is a testbed for laboratory experiments in laser-based wavefront sensing. It emulates laser uplink from a 4m telescope with 1.6 arcsec seeing and laser back-scattering from up to 20 km. Currently there are three current wavefront sensing capabilities. The first two are from a wide-field of view (1.0 arcmin) Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor observing a constellation of point sources at infinity (reference targets, star-oriented wavefront sensing), or an image from emulated back-scattering (wide-field correlation wavefront sensing). The third is based on the PPPP concept. Other sub-systems are laser projection replicating a pupil launch, a 7x7 pupil-conjugate deformable mirror (DM), and a wide-field camera for PSF analysis. A 500 Hz rate accumulates sufficient data for statistical and machine-learning analysis over hour timescales. It is a compact design (2.1m2) with mostly commercial dioptric components. The sub-system optical interfaces are identical: a flat focal plane for easy bench reconfiguration. The end-to-end design is diffraction-limited with ≤ 1% pupil distortion for wavelengths λ=633–750 nm.

Citation

Bharmal, N. A., Bramall, D., Calcines Rosario, A. Z., Morris, T. J., Schmoll, J., & Staykov, L. (2022, December). WIVERN: a laboratory experiment for testing novel laser-based wavefront sensing techniques. Presented at Adaptive Optics Systems VIII

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Adaptive Optics Systems VIII
• Online Publication Date: Aug 29, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Sep 29, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 29, 2022
• Publisher: SPIE
• Book Title: Proceedings Volume 12185, Adaptive Optics Systems VIII; SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation
• ISBN: 9781510653511
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2629888
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1136234