Deformable mirror controller for open-loop adaptive optics

Guzmán, Dani; Guesalaga, Andrés; Myers, Richard; Sharples, Ray; Morris, Tim; Basden, Alastair; Saunter, Christopher; Dipper, Nigel; Young, Laura; Rodríguez, Luis; Reyes, Marcos; Martin, Yolanda
Bibliographical reference

Adaptive Optics Systems. Edited by Hubin, Norbert; Max, Claire E.; Wizinowich, Peter L. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 7015, pp. 70153X-70153X-12 (2008).

Advertised on:
7
2008
Number of authors
12
IAC number of authors
3
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
A Deformable Mirror Controller (DMC) has been devised to overcome the open-loop nature of Multi Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO), in particular for AO systems with update rates of 1 ms or less. The system is based on a figure sensor, which uses a monochromatic illumination source and a Shack-Hartmann (SH) wavefront sensor (WFS) to obtain a fine sampling of DM's 3D surface. The sensor's beam is optically separated from the science path in order to not interfere with science observations. The DMC incorporates a real-time controller in charge of driving the DM. This controller runs in a dedicated Field-Programmable-Gate-Array (FPGA) based processor to keep up with stringent speed requirements. The DMC is being tested in the laboratory and is part of CANARY, an MOAO on-sky demonstrator to be installed at the William Hershel Telescope.