Adaptive Optics on Large Telescopes

Andreas Glindemann (aglindem@eso.org)

European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany

Stefan Hippler (hippler@mpia-hd.mpg.de)

Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany

Thomas Berkefeld
Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany

Wolfgang Hackenberg
Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany

Abstract. Observations with ground based telescopes suffer from atmospheric turbulence.
Independent of the telescope size the angular resolution in the visible is equivalent to that of
a telescope with a diameter of 10–20 cm. This effect is caused by the turbulent mixing of air
with different temperature in the atmosphere. Thus, the perfectly plane wave from a star at
infinity is aberrated before it enters the telescope.
In the following, we will discuss the physical background of imaging through turbulence,
using Kolmogorov statistics, and the different techniques to sense and to correct the wave-
front aberrations with adaptive optics. The requirements for the control loop of an adaptive
optics system are discussed including formulas for the limiting magnitude of the guide star as
a function of the wave-front sensing method, of the quality of the wave-front sensor camera,
and of the degree of correction.
Finally, a short introduction to deformable mirror technology will be given followed by
the presentation of a new method to measure and to distinguish individual turbulent layers in
order to increase the isoplanatic angle.

1. Introduction

The image quality of ground based telescopes suffers from atmospheric tur-
bulence. Independent of the telescope size the angular resolution in the visible
is equivalent to that of a telescope with a diameter of 10–20 cm. This effect
is caused by the turbulent mixing of air with different temperature in the
atmosphere. Thus, the perfectly plane wave from a star at infinity is aberrated
before it enters the telescope.
It was the idea of H. Babcock (1953) to correct these aberrations with a
deformable mirror to obtain diffraction limited images. The principle of an
adaptive optics system is displayed in Figure 1. The deformable mirror, a
wave-front sensor and a camera in the corrected focus form the main ele-
ments. The wave-front sensor measures the aberrations with a high sampling
rate and sends the control signals to the deformable mirror in order to correct
the aberrations. Then, the corrected focus can be recorded by a camera with
an exposure time independent of atmospheric turbulence.

c 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Although this sounds simple, some demanding technical requirements for

the wave-front sensor and for the deformable mirror delayed the realisation
of adaptive optics systems by several decades. In the US Air Force, adap-
tive optics systems were developed since 1970 in classified research (Hardy
et al., 1977) both for improved imaging of satellites and for the projection
of high energy laser beams onto missiles. In the civilian sector, it took un-
til the late 1980’s before the COME-ON system of the European Southern
Observatory was installed on the 3.6-m telescope in Chile (Merkle et al.,
1989). In the northern hemisphere, the PUEO adaptive optics system of the
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope was the first to become available to the
astronomical community for regular science observations in 1996 (Rigaut,
1997).
Turbulent Wavefront

Wavefront-
Deformable sensor
Mirror
Corrected
Focus
Figure 1. The main elements of an adaptive optics system. The wave-front sensor measures
the aberrations and sends the information to the deformable mirror to flatten the wave-front.
A camera in the corrected focus takes the corrected image.

The technical requirements for adaptive optics systems concern the sampling
rate and the sensitivity of the wave-front sensor camera, and the frequency
that can be applied to the deformable mirror. The required sampling rate is
determined by the rate of changes of the atmospheric turbulences. Therefore,
the statistical parameters of the turbulence play a vital role for adaptive optics
systems. Kolmogorov statistics provide a suitable theoretical model for at-
mospheric turbulence. Measurements of the statistical properties have mostly
confirmed the assumptions of this theory.
The most important question for the applicability of adaptive optics sys-
tems to astronomical research is the question about the sky coverage: how
much of the sky can be observed given that a star of suitable brightness, the
guide star in the wave-front sensor, has to be close to the object star? The
required brightness of the guide star follows from the required sampling rate
of the wave-front sensor camera determined by the rate of changes in the
atmosphere, and from the desired degree of correction. In Figure 2, simulated
short exposure images of a single star on a 3.5-m telescope under identical
atmospheric conditions are displayed at different wavelengths. At 10 µm, a
single diffraction limited speckle is moving around slowly, and image sta-
bilisation is sufficient to create a diffraction limited image. In the visible
at 0.5 µm, a speckle cloud of a few hundred speckles displays a dynamic

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behaviour similar to Brownian motion. Creating a single diffraction limited

point spread function requires a deformable mirror with approximately as
many actuators as there are speckles. This example illustrates the very dif-
ferent requirements for the adaptive optics system at different wavelengths.
Thus, the answer to the question about the sky coverage depends on the
desired degree of correction and the subsequent parameters for wave-front
sensor sampling rate, and on atmospheric conditions.

Figure 2. Speckle images of a single star in the visible at 0.5 µm (on the left) and at 10 µm (on
the right) under identical atmospheric conditions on a 3.5-m telescope. In the 10 µm image,
parts of the first diffraction ring can be seen. A simulation for atmospheric turbulence was
used to produce the images.

In the following, we will discuss the physical background of imaging through

turbulence, and the different techniques to sense and to correct the aber-
rations caused by the turbulence. Examples of adaptive optics systems will
demonstrate how the image improvement is done in practice.
The paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, after a short introduction to
the notation used in Fourier optics, the Kolomogorov statistics and the impact
on the imaging process are investigated. The components of adaptive optics
systems are presented in Section 3 discussing methods for wave-front sensing
and reconstruction, and the closed loop operation. The limiting magnitude
of the guide star is expressed quantitatively as a function of the wave-front
sensing method, of the quality of the wave-front sensor camera, and of the
degree of correction.
Also in Section 3, the deformable mirror technology is introduced. A
new method is discussed in Section 4 to measure and distinguish individual
turbulent layers in order to increase the isoplanatic angle.
For further reading on this subject, the books by Tyson (1998) and by
F. Roddier (Ed.) (1999) cover the field in great detail. Roggemann and Welsh
(1996) devote several chapters in their book on imaging through turbulence to

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adaptive optics, and Beckers (1993) presents an overview of the applications

of adaptive optics to astronomy. The conference proceedings of a NATO sum-
mer school on adaptive optics, edited by D. Alloin and J.-M. Mariotti (1994),
contain interesting contributions for the expert reader.

2. Imaging through Atmospheric Turbulence

In the following, the relevant theoretical framework for understanding imag-

ing through atmospheric turbulence will be discussed. For a more detailed
description the reader is referred to the review by Roddier (1981) which is
mainly based on the analysis of wave propagation in a turbulent medium by
Tatarski (1961).
The quantities and the underlying theory of the imaging process are briefly
presented at the beginning of this section. Then, Kolmogorov’s mathematical
model to describe atmospheric turbulence is introduced (Kolmogorov, 1961),
the statistical properties of the electromagnetic wave are discussed, and the
impact on image motion and the appearance of the image are investigated.

2.1. P RELIMINARIES

The wave propagation through the atmosphere and the telescope into the
focal plane is very conveniently described by Fresnel diffraction. Incorpo-
rating optical elements like lenses or mirrors in a spherical approximation
leads to the well known Fourier relationship between the amplitude of the
electromagnetic wave in the pupil of the telescope and the amplitude in its
focal plane (Goodman, 1968; Born and Wolf, 1970; Marathay, 1982).
We use the notation Ψ(~x) for the complex amplitude in the telescope pupil
and A(~u) for the complex amplitude in the focal plane. The two quantities are
connected through a Fourier transform
Z
A(~u) = Ψ(~x) exp(2πi~x~u) d~x;

where the integration is performed over the telescope pupil. The phase φ(~x)
of Ψ(~x) incorporates the turbulent atmosphere as well as the telescope aber-
rations. In the telescope focus, we are usually interested in the intensity dis-
tribution I (~u) = jA(~u)j2 that can be written as
ZZ
I (~u) = Ψ(~x0 )Ψ (~x00 ) exp(2πi(~x0 ;~x00 )~u) d~x0 d~x00
Z Z 
= Ψ(~x0 )Ψ (~x0 ;~x)d~x0 exp(2πi~x~u) d~x;
R
where Ψ(~x0 )Ψ (~x0 ;~x)d~x0 is the autocorrelation of the amplitude in the tele-
scope pupil that is called the optical transfer function (OTF). If a plane wave

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from a point source at infinity enters a perfect, i.e. aberration free, telescope
the OTF is a purely real function – approximately shaped like a triangle – and
its Fourier transform is the diffraction limited point spread function, the Airy
disk.
In the case of statistical fluctuations of the electromagnetic wave, due to
an incoherent source or due to atmospheric turbulence, the autocorrelation
can be expressed as an ensemble average over all possible realisations, called
the coherence function:
Γ(~x) =< Ψ(~x0 )Ψ (~x0 ;~x) > :
It is one of the main tasks of turbulence theory to connect the atmospheric
properties to the coherence function in the telescope pupil and, thus, to its
Fourier transform, the point spread function (PSF) in the telescope focal
plane. If atmospheric turbulence rather than the telescope diameter limits the
size of the PSF it is called the seeing disk and its full width at half maximum
(FWHM) is called the seeing.

2.2. KOLMOGOROV TURBULENCE

The statistics of the spatial and temporal structure of atmospheric turbulence

is of great importance to describing the propagation of light through the at-
mosphere. Following from the theory of fluid motion the flow of air becomes
turbulent, i.e. unstable and random, if the Reynolds number Re = L0 v0 =kv
exceeds a critical value, where L0 is the characteristic size of the flow, v0
is the characteristic velocity and kv is the kinematic viscosity. With typical
numbers for these parameters, L0  15 m, v0  10 m/ sec and kv = 15  10;6
it is Re  105 which corresponds to fully developed turbulence.
Kolmogorov, 1961 suggested that the kinetic energy in the largest struc-
tures of the turbulence is transferred successively to smaller and smaller struc-
tures. He also assumed that the motion of the turbulent structure is both
homogeneous and isotropic implying that the second and higher order sta-
tistical moments of the turbulence depend only on the distance between any
two points in the structure. If the product of the characteristic size L of the
small structure and its velocity v is too small to keep the Reynolds number in
the turbulent regime the break up process stops and the kinetic energy is dis-
sipated as heat by viscous friction. In a stationary state, the energy flow from
larger structures L to smaller structures l must be constant, i.e. the amount
of energy that is being injected into the largest structure must be equal to the
energy that is dissipated as heat. It is E (l )dl the kinetic energy of a structure
with a size between l and l + dl. If the typical transfer time of E (l )dl through
a structure of size l is given by l =v the energy flow rate, ε0 , can be written as

2 ρv
1 2
E (L)dL E (l )dl
ε0 = = = = const; (1)
t (L) t (l ) l =v

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and it is
v ∝ l1 3
=
: (2)
The kinetic energy E (k)dk in the spectral range k and k + dk is proportional
to v2 . With the spatial frequency k ∝ l;1 one obtains

E (l )dl = E (k)dk ∝ k;2 3 or E (k) ∝ k;5

= =3
: (3)

For isotropic turbulence the three dimensional case can be calculated by

integrating over the unit sphere:

E (k) = 4πk2 E (~k) ) E (~k) ∝ k;11= 3

: (4)

This relationship expresses the Kolmogorov spectrum. It holds in the inertial

range of turbulence for L; ;1
0  k  l0 where L0 is the outer scale of turbu-
1

lence, generally the size of the largest structure that moves with homogeneous
speed, and l0 is the inner scale at which the viscous dissipation starts. The
outer scale of turbulence varies between a few meters close to the ground
where the largest structure is determined by the height over the ground, and
a few hundred meters in the free atmosphere which is the thickness of the
turbulent layer (Colavita, 1990; Tatarski and Zavorotny, 1993; Haniff et al.,
1994). The inner scale of turbulence is in the range of a few millimetres near
the ground to about 1 cm near the tropopause (Roddier, 1981).

2.3. I NDEX - OF - REFRACTION FLUCTUATIONS

Light traveling through the atmosphere is affected by fluctuations of the re-

fraction index. The physical source of these fluctuations are temperature in-
homogeneities produced by turbulent mixing of air. The index of refraction
as a function of wavelength is given by the Cauchy formula (Weast and Astle,
1981)
n(λ) = 1 + (272:6 + 2 )10;6 ;
1:22
(5)
λ
with λ in µm and the numerical parameters for 15o C and 1000 mbar. n(λ) for
different temperatures is displayed in Figure 3. Both numerical parameters
depend slightly on temperature and pressure. However, this dependence can
be neglected in the second parameter (that is 1.22 in Eq. 5), and the index of
refraction n(~r ) can be modelled as the sum of a purely wavelength dependent
part n(λ), and a randomly fluctuating part nf (~r ) depending on temperature
and pressure. This approximation has the consequence that the shape of the
wave-front is independent of the wavelength. Effects that show a wavelength
dependence, like the different number of speckles in the optical and in the
infrared, are caused by the different relative impact of the same wave-front
distortion at different wavelengths.

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 7
n
1.00032

1.00030
T = 0oC
1.00028
15 oC
1.00026 30 oC
0.5 1 1.5 2
λ[µm]
30o C and
Figure 3. The refraction index of air at 0, 15 and 1000 mbar as given by the Cauchy
formula. The dependence on temperature can be modeled by approximating the refraction as
a sum of temperature and wavelength dependent terms.

Using n(λ)  1, the refraction index as a function of temperature and pressure

at optical and near infrared wavelengths can be written as (Ishimura, 1978)
77:6 P ;6
n(~r ) ; 1 = n f (~r ) = 10 ; (6)
T
where T is the temperature of the air in Kelvin and P the pressure in millibar.
It can be shown that the refraction index as a passive, conservative additive,
i.e. a quantity that does not affect atmospheric turbulences and that is not af-
fected by the motion of the air, also follows Kolmogorov statistics (Obukhov,
1949). Then, the power spectral density Φn (k) of n(~r ) has the same spatial
frequency dependence as the kinetic energy and can be expressed as
Φn (k) = 0:033 Cn2 k;11 = 3
: (7)
The quantity Cn2 is called the structure constant of the refraction index fluc-
tuations and has units of m;2 3 . It characterises the strength of the refraction
=

index fluctuations. Measurements of Cn2 have shown a good agreement with

the Kolmogorov theory (see e.g. Hufnagel (1974) and Clifford (1968)). The
latest measurements of Cn2 have been performed by Klückers et al. (1998)
using a method suggested by Vernin and Roddier (1973).
Based on measurements Hufnagel and Valley (1980) suggested a model
for the atmospheric turbulence profile called the Hufnagel-Valley-Boundary
model. Since the profile varies from site to site and from time to time this
model can only give a rough idea of the layer structure. The structure constant
can be modelled using the formula
Cn2 (h) = 2:2  10;23 h10 e;h + 10;16 e;h 15
= :
+ 1:7  10;14 e;h 01
= :
: (8)
Like the statistical distribution of velocity discussed in Sect. 2.2 the refrac-
tion index distribution is isotropic and homogeneous as long as the spatial

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frequencies involved are in the inertial range, with L; ;1

0  k  l0 . The
1

Kolmogorov theory predicts a mathematical form for Φn (k) only inside the
inertial range. The von Karman spectrum (Ishimura, 1978) models the power
spectral density also outside of this regime.

C 2n (h)
-15
1 10
-16
5 10

-15
1 10
-16
5 10

-16
1 10
-17
5 10

0 5 10 15 20 h[km]
Figure 4. Average Cn2
profile as a function of altitude in km as given by the Hufna-
gel-Valley-Boundary model. Two distinct layers can be distinguished, near the ground (100
m) and at 10 km.

So far, only the power spectral density of the refraction index fluctuations has
been discussed. The power spectral density is related to the autocorrelation
Γn (~r) =< n(~r1 )n(~r1 +~r) > by the Wiener-Khinchin theorem:
Z
Γn (~r ) = Φn (j~kj)e;2πik r d~k:
~~
(9)

As already noted, the random process leading to the fluctuation of the refrac-
tive index is isotropic and homogeneous. Thus, second and higher moments
of n, like the autocorrelation depend only on the distance between two points.
This allows us to express both the power spectral density and the autocorre-
lation as functions of the three dimensional vectors~k and ~r where j~kj and j~r j
are denoted by k and r respectively.
To avoid the integration over the pole at k = 0 the structure function of the
refraction index is introduced as
Dn (r) = < jn(r1 ) ; n(r1 + r)j2 >

= 2( n(r1 )2 ; n(r1 )n(r1 + r)

< > < >)

= 2(Γn (0) ; Γn (r)) :

The result of this calculation was derived by Obukhov (1949):

Dn (r) = Cn2 r2 3
=
: (10)

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This form of the structure function of the refractive index is known as Obuk-
hov’s law. Together with the Kolmogorov spectrum (Eq. 7) it forms the basis
for the description of wave propagation through turbulence.

2.4. S TATISTICAL PROPERTIES OF THE ABERRATED COMPLEX WAVE

For the sake of simplicity, only horizontal monochromatic plane waves are
considered, propagating downwards through atmospheric turbulence from a
star at zenith. The fluctuations of the complex amplitude are calculated by
using the Kolmogorov spectrum and Obukhov’s law.
Using the thin screen approximation (Roddier, 1981), the layer thickness
is assumed to be large compared to the correlation scale of the fluctuations
but small enough to neglect diffraction effects within the layer. Also, the layer
is non-absorbing and its statistical properties depend only on the altitude h,
i.e. the structure constant Cn2 does not vary in the horizontal direction.
After propagation through a thin turbulent layer at altitude h, the phase is
related to the distribution of the refractive index through
Z h+δh
2π
φh (~x) = n(~x; z)dz; (11)
λ h

where δh is the thickness of the layer and ~x = (x; y) denotes the horizontal
coordinate vector. The complex amplitude after propagation through a layer
at altitude h can be written as
Ψh (~x) = eiφh (x) : ~
(12)
To describe the statistical properties of the complex wave we need the cor-
relation function of the complex amplitude, the coherence function, defined
as
Γh (~x) = < Ψh (~x0 )Ψh (~x0 +~x) >
ei[φh (x );φh (x +x)] > :
~ 0 ~ 0 ~
= < (13)
As the intensity distribution in the telescope focal plane is the Fourier trans-
form of the coherence function in the telescope aperture, its description as a
function of the atmospheric properties determines the telescope point spread
function affected by atmospheric turbulence, i.e. the seeing disk.
Since the phase φh (~x) is the sum of a large number of independent vari-
ables (the refraction indices n(~x; z), Eq. 11) it is reasonable to apply the
central-limit theorem implying that φh (~x) and also φh (~x0 ) ; φh (~x0 + ~x) fol-
low Gaussian statistics. Then, the expectation value in Eq.(13) is called the
characteristic function of the Gaussian random process, and it is defined as
Z
eizx pv (x)dx = e; 2
1
izv v2 >z2
<
< e >= ; (14)

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where pv (x) denotes the Gaussian distribution of the random variable v. In

Eq.(13) v is the Gaussian distributed phase difference φh (~x0 ) ; φh (~x0 +~x) and
z equals unity. Using these properties, the coherence function can be written
as
Γh (~x) = e; 2 [φh (x );φh (x +x)] ;
1 0 <
0~ 2 ~ ~ >
(15)
or, introducing the phase structure function Dφ h (~x) =< [φh (~x0 ) ; φh (~x0 +~x)]2 >,
;

Γh (~x) = e; 2 Dφ h (x) :
1
~
;
(16)
The problem of determining the coherence function of the complex ampli-
tude is now shifted to calculating the phase structure function Dφ h (~x). The ;

relation between the three-dimensional distribution of the refraction index

and the two-dimensional distribution of the phase is given by Eq.(11). This
leads from the three-dimensional structure function of the refraction index
(Eq. 10) to the one of the phase Dφ h (~x) that depends on the two-dimensional
;

vector ~x. Assuming also that δh is much larger than the correlation scale of
the fluctuations, one can show that for a horizontal wave-front entering the
layer i at altitude hi , the phase structure function at the exit of the layer is
(Fried, 1966)
2π
Dφ hi (x) = 2:91( )2 δhiCn2i x5 3 ; (17) =

λ
;

with x = j~xj.
Calculating the coherence function iteratively for multiple layers one ob-
tains the coherence function on the ground in the telescope aperture after
propagation through N turbulent layers as

Ψ0 (x0 )Ψ0 (x0 + x) > e; 2 Dφ 0 (x) ; with

1
< = ;

2π 2 N
λ i∑
Dφ 0 (x)
; = 2:91( ) δhiCn2i x5 = 3
: (18)
=1

The distances between the layers and the size of the diffraction structures are
such that the propagation of the complex amplitude has to be described by
Fresnel diffraction. That means that the complex amplitude on the ground
fluctuates both in amplitude and in phase. The propagation of the coherence
function through the atmosphere, however, is reduced to a simple product of
the coherence functions of the single layers, unaffected by Fresnel diffraction
(Roddier, 1981). This reflects the general property of the coherence function
that Fresnel terms cancel when describing the propagation of the coherence
function through space or through an optical system (Marathay, 1982).
In the case of a continuous distribution of turbulence and of a source at
zenith distance γ one obtains
Z
Dφ 0 (x) = 2:91( )2 (cos γ);1 x5
2π 3
=
Cn2 (h)dh: (19)
λ
;

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Dφ 0 is the phase structure function of the phase in rad. If the phase is given in
;

the dimension of meter it describes the physical shape of the turbulent wave-
front. It is interesting to note that the phase structure function of the phase in
meter, and thus the shape of the phase, is independent of wavelength. This
follows from the approximation n(~r ) = n(λ) + nf (~r ). Therefore, a wave-front
sensor can be operated in the visible determining the shape of the wave-front
and steering the deformable mirror for observations in the infrared.
Fried further simplified the expression by introducing the quantity r0 ,
called the Fried parameter (Fried, 1965), which is defined by
 Z ;3 5
=

r0 = 0:423 (
2π 2
) (cos γ)
;1 Cn2 (h)dh : (20)
λ

The wavelength dependence of r0 is given by r0 ∝ λ6 5 and the dependence =

on zenith angle is r0 ∝ (cos γ)3 5 .

=

The phase structure function in the telescope pupil can now be expressed
by
 
x 53 =

Dφ 0 (x) = 6:88
; ; (21)
r0
and the coherence function in the telescope pupil is

Γ0 (x) =< Ψ0 (x0 )Ψ0 (x0 + x) >= e

;3 44( rx0 )5 3 :
:
=

(22)
If a single star is observed through the telescope the turbulence limited point
spread function is obtained by computing the Fourier integral of the co-
herence function over the circular telescope aperture. Figure 5 displays the
turbulence limited point spread function, that is called the seeing disk. A
Gaussian function models the seeing disk reasonably well. However, with the
Gaussian approximation the seeing disk converges to zero much faster than
measured seeing profiles that are better described by the Kolmogorov model.
The full width half maximum (FWHM) of the seeing disk is 0:98λ=r0 corre-
sponding in good approximation to a telescope with diameter r0 . With r0 ∝
λ6 5 the seeing is λ=r0 ∝ λ;1 5 , i.e. it is decreasing slowly with increasing
= =

wavelength.
Very often the power spectrum of the phase fluctuations is needed for anal-
ysis. Similar to the calculation that related the Kolmogorov spectrum of re-
fractive index fluctuations (Eq. 7) to the structure function of the refractive
index (Eq. 10) the Kolmogorov power spectrum of the phase fluctuations can
be calculated (Noll, 1976), yielding

Φ(k) = 0:023 r0
;5 3 k;11
= =3
: (23)
The integral over the power spectrum gives the variance of the phase. As
noted above, the integral over Φ(k) ∝ k;11 3 is infinite. This means, that the
=

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12

I rel
1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.49 λ/r 0 α
Figure 5. The intensity distribution in a seeing disk in arbitrary units calculated numerically
 5=3
using the phase structure function Dφ (x) = 6:88 x . The full width at half maximum
r0
(FWHM) is approximately λ=r0 .

variance of the turbulent phase is infinite which is a well known property

of Kolmogorov turbulence. If the outer scale is finite the (now finite) vari-
ance can be calculated using the von Karman spectrum (Ishimura, 1978). In
general, the phase variance increases with increasing outer scale.

2.5. A NISOPLANATIC AND TEMPORAL EFFECTS

So far we have discussed a single plane wave originating from a star at an

angular distance γ from zenith. By calculating the coherence function as the
ensemble average over many realisations of the atmospheric turbulence we
have effectively determined the time average and, thus, the time averaged
seeing disk. A snapshot image of a single random realisation of the turbulence
displays the well known speckle image caused by the quasi frozen turbulence
of the atmosphere. The light of a star at a slightly different angular position
travels through slightly different portions of the atmosphere – the more dif-
ferent the higher the contributing layers are – and displays a different speckle
pattern. However, the long time exposures of the two stars are identical as
long as the statistical characteristics of the turbulent layers, i.e. Cn2 , do not
differ. In speckle interferometry this property allows the use of a reference
star that might be separated by several degrees from the science object but
that still has the same statistical parameters.
In adaptive optics systems the guide star has to be very close to the ob-
served object in order to measure a wave-front that closely resembles the
object wave-front. The two quantities, the acceptable angular distance be-
tween the object and the guide star (the isoplanatic angle), and the rate of the
temporal decorrelation of the turbulence that determines the required sam-

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pling rate of the wave-front sensor camera, are the most important limiting
factors for the performance.
The isoplanacy can be quantified in a very simple way: The displacement
by an angle~θ is replaced by the lateral shift~θh of the relevant layer at altitude
h, and the phase distribution in the observing direction~θ +~θ0 can be expressed
by a shift of the phase at~θ0 :
φ(~x;~θ +~θ0 ) = φ(~x ;~θh;~θ0 ): (24)
The angular phase structure function, describing the correlation between the
phase distribution in~θ and ~θ0 can be written as
Dφ (~θ) =
0
[φ(~x;~θ ) ; φh(x ; θh θ0 )]2
~ ;~
 θh 5 3
< ~ >

= 6:88 : (25)
r0
The influence of different layers with different wind speeds can be investi-
gated by applying the individual altitudes hi of the individual layers i with
structure constants Cn2i (see Eq. 18) and performing the summation.
For the simplest case of a single dominant layer at altitude h an isoplanatic
angle can be defined as θ0 = r0 =h. Thus, if the main turbulent layer is at an
altitude of 10 km and r0 = 60 cm, which corresponds to 0.7600 seeing in the
near infrared at λ = 2:2 µm1 , it is θ0 = 1200 . This value can only give an idea
of the order of magnitude of the isoplanatic angle. In practical cases the value
depends on the particular composition of the atmosphere and the degree of
the adaptive correction. For low order adaptive optics, e.g. a tip-tilt system or
low altitude layers the angle may be much larger.
Using the Taylor hypothesis of frozen turbulence the temporal evolution
can be estimated. The assumption is that a static layer of turbulence moves
with constant speed ~v in front of the telescope aperture. Then the phase at
point ~x at time t0 + t can be written as
φ(~x; t 0 + t ) = φ(~x ;~vt ; t 0 ); (26)
and the temporal phase structure function is
Dφ (~vt ) =< [φ(~x; t 0 ) ; φ(~x ;~vt ; t 0 )]2 > : (27)
The temporal difference is thus transformed to a difference in spatial coor-
dinates with the difference being ~vt. The phase structure function depends
individually on the two coordinates parallel and perpendicular to the wind
direction. In the direction of the wind speed a simple estimate of the corre-
lation time similar to the isoplanatic angle above yields the coherence time
1 The atmospheric window at 2.20.2 µm is called the K-band. Most of the numerical
examples will be given for this band.

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14

τ0 = r0 =j~vj. A wind speed of v = 10 m/ sec and a Fried parameter of r0 = 60 cm

give a coherence time of τ0 = 60 msec. In speckle interferometry, this is ap-
proximately the exposure time that can be used for single speckle images.
For adaptive optics the reciprocal of the coherence time indicates the required
bandwidth of the closed loop correction system. Greenwood and Fried, 1976,
after more elaborate analysis, gave a definition for the required bandwidth,
the so-called Greenwood frequency that is often used to specify adaptive op-
tics system. For a single turbulent layer this frequency is fG = 0:43v=r0 (see
Sect. 3.3). Multiple layers with different speeds are considered equivalently
to the case of anisoplanacy by applying individual speed vectors to individual
layers with structure constants Cn2i (Roddier et al., 1982).
The temporal power spectrum of the phase fluctuations can be calculated
from the spatial power spectrum Φ(~jk j) (Eq. 23). With ~v being e.g. parallel to
the x axis, it is kx = f =v and an integration over ky is performed to obtain the
temporal power spectrum Φt ( f ) (Conan et al., 1995),
Z
;5 3 1
 f ;8 3
=

Φt ( f ) = 1=v Φ( f =v; ky ) dky = 0:077 r0

=
: (28)
v v

The variance of the phase fluctuations is the integral over the temporal power
spectrum. As there is a pole at f = 0 this integral is infinite which is the
well known property of Kolmogorov turbulence discussed above (Tatarski,
1961). This integral can be computed if the outer scale L0 is taken to be finite.
As already noted, the Kolmogorov spectrum is not defined outside the inertial
range and the von Karman spectrum has to be used to perform the integration.

2.6. I MAGE MOTION

In the last section, the statistical properties of the propagating turbulent wave-
front have been described. When it comes to analysing the imaging process in
the telescope, some assumptions have to be made about the phase distribution
in the telescope aperture. We assume that the turbulent atmosphere can be
represented by a single thin layer in the telescope aperture neglecting the ef-
fects of Fresnel diffraction, e.g. scintillation, discussed in Sect. 2.4 (Roddier,
1981).
The average gradient of the phase distribution in the telescope aperture
determines the position of the image in the telescope focus. Although this is a
low-order effect of atmospheric turbulence on the imaging process it is worth-
while discussing it in more detail as it determines the requirements for wave-
front sensors like the Shack-Hartmann sensor that rely on reconstructing the
wave-front from gradient measurements in the subapertures.
First we discuss the statistical properties of the gradient ~θ of the wave-
front without averaging over the telescope aperture. The two components θx

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 15

and θy as a function of the horizontal coordinate ~x = (x; y) are (Roddier, 1981)

λ ∂ λ ∂
θx (x; y) = ; φ(x; y) and θy (x; y) = ; φ(x; y) : (29)
2π ∂x 2π ∂y

The power spectra of the two vector components Φθx (~k) and Φθy (~k) are re-
lated to the power spectrum of the phase Φ(~jkj) by Φθx y (~k) = λ2 kx2 y Φ(j~k j),
; ;

yielding

Φθ (k) = 0:023λ2 (kx2 + ky2 )r0

;5 3 k;11
= = 3
= 0:023λ
2 ;5 3 k;5
r0
= =3
: (30)

The effect of averaging the gradient over the telescope aperture is considered
by convolving the gradient in Eq.(29) with the aperture function A(~x) that
usually has a circular shape. The central obscuration usually can be neglected.
The averaged gradient can be written as
Z
θD
x (~x) = θx (~x0 )A(~x ; ~x0 )d~x0 ; (31)

where the superscript D indicates the average over the aperture D. For a point
like aperture the averaging process collapses yielding θD ~0
x (~x) = θx (x ). The
convolution transforms into a multiplication in Fourier space and one obtains
the power spectrum of the phase gradient after averaging with the telescope
aperture (Martin, 1987; Conan et al., 1995)

;5 3 k;5 2J1 (πDk) 2

ΦD 2 3
= =
θ (k ) = 0:023λ r0 ; (32)
πDk
with J1 the first order Bessel function describing the diffraction limited point
spread function, the Airy disk, which is the Fourier transform of the circular
aperture (Born and Wolf, 1970). The Bessel function acts as a low pass filter
on the power spectrum. The contributions at high frequencies corresponding
to small distances in the turbulent wave-front are reduced as the averaging
process smoothes the gradients. At low frequencies, i.e. for large distances
the effect of the pupil averaging is much reduced and the power spectrum is
unaffected.
The variance of the image motion can be calculated by integrating over
the power spectrum ΦD θ (k ) yielding the two-axis variance of the position θ of
the image centroid as (Tyler, 1994)

(∆θ) = 0:34(λ=r0 ) (D=r0 )

2 2 ;1 3 [arcsec2 ];
=
(33)

with λ=r0 the seeing in arcsec. The quotient D=r0 will appear in all those
formulas that describe the imaging process in the telescope. In practical cases
it can be calculated quite easily as it relates the size of the seeing disk λ=r0 to

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16

the FWHM of the Airy pattern λ=D, λλ rD0 = D=r0 . In 0.7600 seeing at 2:2 µm
=

on a 3.5-m telescope it is D=r0 = 6.

The dependence of (∆θ)2 on D;1 3 means that the variance of the image
=

motion increases with decreasing telescope diameter. It is important to note

that (∆θ)2 is independent of wavelength; the image motion in arcsec is the
same at all wavelengths. Thus, wave-front sensors like the Shack-Hartmann
sensor measuring the wave-front gradient can be operated in the visible for
corrections at all wavelengths.

2.6.1. Temporal evolution of image motion

The Taylor hypothesis of frozen turbulence is used again to estimate the
effect of moving turbulence. The temporal power spectrum of the averaged
phase gradient can be calculated similar to the one of the phase (Eq. 28) by
integrating over the direction perpendicular to the wind speed. It is
Z
Φθ t ( f ) = 1=v
; ΦD
θ ( f =v; ky ) dky : (34)

This integral cannot be solved in closed form. Tyler, 1994 gave an approxima-
tion for the power spectrum at low and high frequencies that can be simplified
by assuming that there is one dominant layer with wind speed v̂ (Glindemann,
1997b). Then, the power spectral density of the centroid motion in the two
regimes are

Pflow = 0:096(r0 =v̂)1 =3

(λ=r0 )
2
f ;2 3
= 2
[arcsec = Hz];
Pfhigh = 0:0013(D=v̂ );8 =3
(λ=r0 )
2
(D=r0 )
;1 3 f ;11 3 [arcsec2 =Hz]; (35)
= =

where λ=r0 is the seeing in arcsec. In Figure 6 , Pflow and Pfhigh are displayed
and compared to measured power spectra. In the low frequency region the
power spectrum decreases with f ;2 3 and it is independent of the size of
=

the aperture D. In the high frequency region the spectrum is proportional

to f ;11 3 decreasing with D;3 . This illustrates the influence of the Bessel
=

function as a low pass filter that leaves the low frequency region unaffected by
the aperture and that takes effect as soon as the frequency is beyond a value of
ft = 0:24v̂=D which is the transient region between the two approximations.
This value agrees well with the value given by Conan et al. (1995). Because
of the steep slope (∝ f ;11 3 ) of the power spectrum at frequencies beyond
=

the transient frequency ft the contributions to the image motion are very
small. Thus, a tip-tilt system that stabilises the image motion must have a
bandwidth of approximately ft to correct for most of the turbulence induced
image motion. In Kasper et al. (this issue), the bandwidth requirements will
be discussed in greater detail.
The increasing variance of the image motion with smaller apertures D can
now be attributed to an increase of the power spectrum in the high frequency

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 17

region. In order to stabilise the image motion on smaller telescopes the cor-
rection frequency has to be higher. It is interesting to note that if the telescope
aperture is larger than the outer scale of turbulence L0 the image motion is
reduced below the values predicted by Kolmogorov statistics. This affects
in particular the fringe motion on telescope interferometers with a baseline
longer than L0 .
One axis power spectra of image centroid motion
1
25Hz
50Hz
100Hz
0.1 Theory

0.01
Power[arcsec^2/Hz]

0.001

0.0001

1e-05

1e-06
0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100
Frequency[Hz]
Figure 6. Measured power spectra of the image centroid motion on a 3.5-m telescope for
different sampling frequencies. The dashed lines display the approximation for the same see-
ing and wind parameters. From the transient frequency of about ft = 1 Hz and D = 3:5 m the
effective wind speed can be estimated to be v̂  14 m=sec. The measurements agree very well
with each other and reasonably well with the theoretical curve (dotted line) (Glindemann,
1997b).

2.7. Z ERNIKE REPRESENTATION OF ATMOSPHERIC TURBULENCE

In the theory of optical aberrations Zernike polynomials are used very often
to describe the aberrations. They were introduced in 1934 by F. Zernike who
deduced them from the Jacobi polynomials and slightly modified them for
the application in optics (Zernike, 1934). Zernike polynomials have the ad-
vantage that they are mathematically well defined and that the low order terms
are related to the classical aberrations like astigmatism, coma and spherical
aberration.
Since the Zernike polynomials are defined on the unit circle and since we
are interested in the turbulent wave-front in the circular telescope aperture

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18

it is useful to express the wave-front in terms of the Zernike polynomials.

The influence of the central obscuration is negligible. Noll, 1976 introduced
a normalisation for the polynomials that is particularly suited for application
to Kolmogorov turbulence. In this normalisation the rms value of each poly-
nomial over the circle is set equal to one. The Zernike polynomials form a set
of orthogonal polynomials and it is convenient to write them as a function of
ρ and θ:
p p
n (ρ) 2 cos (mθ) for m 6= 0
n + 1 Rm
Z jeven =
p p ; ;

n (ρ) 2 sin(mθ) for m 6= 0

n + 1 Rm
Z jodd =
p ; ; (36)
Zj = n + 1 Rn (ρ); for m = 0;
0

where
n;m
2
;1)s (n ; s)! ρn;2s
(
n (ρ ) =
Rm ∑ nm
s 0 s!( 2 ; s)! ( 2 ; s)!
+ n;m : (37)
=

Table I shows the low order Zernike polynomials where the columns m indi-
cate the azimuthal orders and the rows n the radial orders.
Table I. Zernike polynomials Z j for j = 1 to 11. n is the radial order and m the
azimuthal order. The modes are ordered such that even j correspond to the symmetric
modes given by cos mθ and odd j to the antisymmetric modes given by sin mθ

n m=0 m=1 m=2 m=3

0 Z1 =1
(piston)
1 Z2 =2ρcos θ
Z3 =2ρsin θ

p (tip and tilt)

p
Z4 = 3 (2ρ2 ; 1) Z5 = 6 ρ2 sin 2θ
2
p
(focus) Z6 = 6 ρ2 cos 2θ

p (astigmatism)
p
Z7 = 8(3ρ3;2ρ) sin θ
3
p p
Z9 = 8ρ3 sin 3θ
Z8 = 8(3ρ3;2ρ) cos θ Z10 = 8ρ3 cos 3θ
(coma) (trifoil)

The polynomial expansion of the arbitrary wave-front φ(ρ; θ) over the unit
circle is defined as ∞
φ(ρ; θ) = ∑ ai Zi (ρ; θ); (38)
i=1
and the coefficients ai , using the orthogonality, are given by
Z
ai = φ(ρ; θ)Zi (ρ; θ)ρdρdθ : (39)
aperture

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 19
Table II. The residual variance ∆ j of Kolmogorov turbulence after the first j Zernike modes
are removed. The difference in the right column illustrates the strength of the single modes
demonstrating that modes of equal radial order contribute the same amount to the variance.

∆1 = 1:030(D=r0 )5=3
∆2 = 0:582(D=r0 )5=3 ∆2 ; ∆1 = 0:448
∆3 = 0:134(D=r0 )5=3 ∆3 ; ∆2 = 0:448
∆4 = 0:111(D=r0 )5=3 ∆4 ; ∆3 = 0:023
∆5 = 0:0880(D=r0 )5=3 ∆5 ; ∆4 = 0:023
∆6 = 0:0648(D=r0 )5=3 ∆6 ; ∆5 = 0:023
∆7 = 0:0587(D=r0 )5=3 ∆7 ; ∆6 = 0:0062
∆8 = 0:0525(D=r0 )5=3 ∆8 ; ∆7 = 0:0062

The convenience of the Zernike polynomials lies in the property that,

following from the Kolmogorov statistics, one can determine individually
the power in every single mode like tip-tilt, astigmatism or coma. One can
then immediately calculate the residual aberration after correcting a specified
number of modes with an adaptive optics system. This computation was done
by Noll (1976). The variance of the residual aberration is expressed as the
variance of the difference between the uncorrected phase and of the removed
modes. If the aberration that is due to the first J Zernike polynomials is written
as
J
φJ (ρ; θ) = ∑ ai Zi (ρ; θ); (40)
i=1
the variance of the remaining aberrations can be expressed as
ZZ
∆J = < [φ(ρ; θ) ; φJ (ρ θ)]2
; > ρdρdθ: (41)
aperture

As already noted, the variance of the phase fluctuations < φ2 (ρ; θ) > is in-
finite. The analysis in terms of Zernike polynomials shows that the infinity
lies in the piston term. Removing the piston term gives a finite value for the
variance of the residual aberration. The residual variances in Table II are given
in terms of (D=r0 )5 3 as the Zernike polynomials are defined in the telescope
=

aperture D. The right column of the table shows the differential improvement.
It shows that the differences are constant for the same radial degree n.
For the removal of higher orders Noll gave an approximation for the phase
variance (Noll, 1976), as
p
∆J  0 2944J;
:
3 =2
(D=r0 )
5=3 2
[rad ] : (42)
Correcting an increasing number of Zernike modes changes the shape of the
seeing disk in an unexpected way. Rather than narrowing the seeing disk in

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20

total, a diffraction limited spike appears on top of the seeing disk. This spike
becomes more dominant with increasing number of corrected modes, until
the seeing halo disappears for perfect correction. Since correcting the low
orders does not affect r0 very much it is intuitively understandable that the
seeing disk, as λ=r0 , remains constant.
The image quality is usually expressed in terms of Strehl ratio that defines
the peak of the point spread function normalised to the peak of the diffraction
limited point spread function. The aberrations can be related to the Strehl
ratio in a simple way using the Maréchal approximation (Born and Wolf,
1970). If the residual variance is smaller than about π2 =4 the Strehl ratio is
approximated by
S = exp(;(∆φ)2 ) : (43)
For a numerical example, we assume an adaptive optics system that perfectly
corrects the first 10 Zernike modes. The Fried parameter is r0 = 60 cm which
is typical in the near infrared and corresponds to a seeing value of 0.7600 . On a
3.5-m telescope the residual variance is 0:0401(D=r0 )5 3 = 0:76 rad2 and the
=

Strehl ratio is 47%.

Expressing the wave-front as a Zernike polynomial the covariance matrix
of the expansion coefficients < ai ai0 > plays an important role. This ma-
trix can be calculated using the power spectrum of the phase fluctuations
(Noll, 1976; Roddier, 1990b). It turns out that the covariance matrix is not
perfectly diagonal. This means that when describing Kolmogorov turbulence
with Zernike polynomials the Zernike modes are not statistically independent
with the consequence that the wave-front reconstruction from the wave-front
sensor data is sub-optimal. Noll found Karhunen-Loève functions to be more
appropriate as they have a diagonal covariance matrix. Their disadvantage in
practice is that they cannot be obtained in closed form. Using a method by
Roddier (1990b) to approximate the Karhunen-Loève functions in terms of
Zernike functions, Lane and Tallon (1992) have shown that when correcting
more than about 20 modes the residual aberration starts decreasing faster
when using Karhunen-Loève functions. In low order systems, this difference
is negligible.
Instead of applying Karhunen-Loève functions for pure Kolmogorov tur-
bulence one can also measure the covariance matrix by using actual atmo-
spheric data and an arbitrary set of polynomials. By diagonalising the mea-
sured covariance matrix one receives the Karhunen-Loève functions repre-
senting the optimum decomposition of the actual turbulent wavefront (Law
and Lane, 1996; Kasper et al., 1999).

2.7.1. Temporal evolution of Zernike modes

Using the same formalism as for the analysis of the temporal characteristics of
the image motion (Sect. 2.6) the temporal evolution of Zernike modes can be
calculated (Noll, 1976; Roddier et al., 1993; Conan et al., 1995). The results

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 21

are important for the specification of the bandwidth requirements of adaptive

optics systems.
In the last section, the covariance matrix of the Zernike coefficients <
ai ai0 > was calculated. Now we are interested in the temporal correlation of
single Zernike coefficients < ai (t 0 )ai (t 0 + t ) >. Thus, equivalent to the calcu-
lation of the power spectrum of the image motion (Sect. 2.6) we determine a
Zernike coefficient as the convolution
Z
ai (ρ; θ) = φ(ρ0 ; θ0 )Zi (ρ ; ρ0 ; θ ; θ0 )ρdρ0 dθ0 : (44)
aperture

At ρ = 0 and θ = 0 this equation is identical to the calculation of the Zernike

coefficient ai (Eq. 39) that can be used (see Noll (1976)) to calculate the vari-
ance of the Zernike modes (see Table. II). The temporal covariance follows
from the spatial covariance < ai (ρ0 ; θ0 ) ai (ρ0 + ρ; θ0 + θ) > by using the frozen
turbulence hypothesis similar to the calculation of the image motion (Eq. 34).
The resulting power spectra cannot be given in closed form. The numerical
results were discussed by Roddier et al. (1993) and Conan et al. (1995), and
they are briefly summarised here. The spectra show a dependence on the ra-
dial degree of the Zernike polynomial at low frequencies and a high frequency
behaviour proportional to f ;17 3 that is independent of the Zernike mode. In
=

the low frequency domain, polynomials with a radial degree of n = 1, Zernike

tip and tilt (see Table I) decrease with f ;2 3 . Higher order polynomials have
=

a slightly different characteristic depending on their azimuthal dependence;

all radially symmetric polynomials go with f0 , all others with f 0 , with f 4 3 =

or with f 2 depending on the wind direction.

The transient frequency between the high and the low frequency regions can
be approximated by
ftn  0:3(n + 1)v̂=D; (45)
where n is the radial degree of the Zernike polynomials. The transient fre-
quency is approximately equal to the bandwidth required to correct for the
Zernike mode in an adaptive optics system.
Averaging the Zernike spectra for a given radial degree shows the mean
behaviour for this degree. This behaviour can also be modelled when using
a multi layer model with different wind directions that is more realistic than
the single layer approach (Conan et al., 1995). The curves are displayed in
Figure 7. It shows that for n > 1 the power spectra are all proportional to f0 at
low frequencies. The curves are scaled in order to give the proper variance of
the single modes (see Table II). It is interesting to note that at high frequencies
the power spectra increase only very slowly with n. The increase in transient
frequency ft , and thus in bandwidth is partially compensated by the decrease
in variance at higher radial degrees. Conan et al., 1995 argue that for a given
degree of correction all modes have to be corrected with approximately the

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22

Normalised power spectral density

n=1
f -2/3

n=3 f0

n=9 f0
f -17/3

f1t f 3t f 9t

Frequency[Hz]
Figure 7. Zernike polynomial mean temporal power spectrum in a given radial degree n for
n=1, 3, 9. The spectra are normalised to the turbulence variance of one polynomial of the
considered radial degree: v̂=D = 10 Hz. The asymptotic power laws and the cutoff frequencies
are indicated. The figure is taken from Conan et al. (1995).

same bandwidth. Otherwise the residual variance from e.g. the tip-tilt cor-
rection could be larger than the uncorrected variance of a high order mode.
This is particularly interesting for laser guide star systems, when the tip-tilt
correction is decoupled from the high order correction. If the image motion
is not corrected very accurately the quality achieved with the higher order
corrections is easily destroyed. We will come back to this point in Sect. 3.3.
It is interesting to compare the high frequency behaviour of the image
motion power spectrum (Eq. 35) that goes with f ;11 3 to the f ;17 3 decay = =

of the Zernike tip-tilt terms. One can show (Glindemann and Rees, 1993),
that the image centroid that usually characterises the image motion is the
sum of Zernike-tilt, -coma and other higher order terms. The slower decrease
can then be attributed to the sum of the single power spectra with increasing
transient frequencies ft . In the low frequency region the f ;2 3 dependence of =

the image motion power spectrum remains unchanged as all high order terms
have much smaller contributions here.

3. Elements of Adaptive Optics Systems

The requirements for the components of adaptive optics systems can be de-
duced from the discussion of imaging through turbulence in Section 2.
This section is organised as follows: Firstly, two different types of wave-
front sensors will be presented and their performance at low signal levels

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 23

will be discussed. Starting with the Shack-Hartmann sensor that is most com-
monly being used since it is conceptually simple and its properties are well
understood, the curvature sensor is described next. Then, the mathemati-
cal principles for the reconstruction of the wave-front and the requirements
for closed loop operation will be investigated. Finally, the technology of
deformable mirrors will be presented.

3.1. WAVE - FRONT SENSING

3.1.1. Shack-Hartmann sensor

The Shack-Hartmann sensor divides the telescope aperture into an array of
smaller subapertures, and a lenslet array is used to produce multiple images
(see Figure 8). The centroid displacement of each of these subimages gives
an estimate of the average wave-front gradient over the subaperture (Primot
et al., 1990) that can be calculated using Eq.(46). The important consequence
is that the Shack-Hartmann sensor is achromatic – the image movement is
independent of wavelength – and that extended sources can be used as long
as they fit into the subimage boundary.
The centroid, or first-order moment M, of the image intensity I (u; v) with
respect to the x-direction in the image, is related to the partial derivative of
the wave-front in the subaperture by (Primot et al., 1990)
RR
image I (u; v) u dudv
Mx = RR
image I (u; v) dudv
ZZ Z d =2 Z 2π
λf ∂φ λf ∂φ
= dxdy = ρdρdθ ; (46)
2π subaperture ∂x 2π 0 0 ∂x
with f the lenslet focal length.
In practice, a Shack-Hartmann sensor is built by putting a lenslet array
in the reimaged telescope pupil. The subimages from each subaperture are
imaged onto a CCD camera. The size of the subimages has to be chosen such
that the image motion even of extended sources does not drive the images
outside of the subimage boundary. The single axis rms image motion can be
calculated from the variance in Eq.(33); it is

∆θ = 0:41(λ=r0 )(d =r0 );1 = 6

[arcsec ]; (47)

where d is now the diameter of the subaperture and λ=r0 is the seeing in
arcsec. ∆θ is between 0.2 and 0.4 times the seeing and the peak-to-valley
image motion about six times this value. Thus, the size of the subimage
should be at least three times the seeing. If the size of the extended sources is
likely to be larger than this the subimage size has to be chosen accordingly.
Even the solar surface can be used for wave-front measurement if a field
stop and image correlation techniques are used to determine the wave-front

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24

gradients. If the subimage size is very large several sources can be observed
independently allowing for isoplanatic effects to be measured (see Sect. 4)
(Glindemann and Berkefeld, 1996).

∆x
∆y

Figure 8. Measurement principle of a Shack-Hartmann sensor. The incoming aberrated wave

is subdivided by the lenslet array and the image centroid in every subimage is shifted according
to the average wave-front slope over the subaperture formed by the lenslet.

The perfect information about the position of the subapertures with respect
to the telescope aperture allows one to calculate the interaction matrix Θsh
linking the image positions with the modes of the wave-front polynomial.
However, this information might be difficult to obtain. Therefore a different
approach was realised in ALFA2 . Instead of calculating the subimage centroid
positions for the Zernike modes (see the following example) the deformable
mirror is driven to form these modes and the subimage centroids are then
measured. This method is discussed in larger detail by Kasper et al. in this
issue.
The example of a 22 Shack-Hartmann sensor subdividing the aperture
into four quarter circles explains the principle (Glindemann and Rees, 1994).
The integration in Eq.(46) has to be performed over the subapertures, ı.e. for
ρ = 0 to 1 and θ = 0 to π=2 for the first subaperture. The centroid displace-
ment in x for the first subaperture therefore becomes

π 2p 3p π
Mx1 = a2 + p a4 + 2(a7 + a9 ) + p a8 + ::: :
4
6(a5 + a6 ) +
2 3 3 2 2

As each lenslet yields two measurements, in x and in y, one obtains a total of

~ containing the measured gradients, the inter-
eight gradients. The vector M
action matrix Θsh and the vector ~a containing the coefficients of the Zernike

2 ALFA is the laser guide star adaptive optics system of the 3.5-m telescope of the German-
Spanish Astronomical Center on Calar Alto

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 25

polynomial form a matrix equation:

0M 1 0a 1
BB Mx1y1 C B 1
C
BB Mx2 CC B
B 2 C
a3 C
a

BB My2 C
C B C
Θsh B a4 C
B
BB C C
=
C B C
: (48)

@ C A B
@ C A
: :

: :

My8 a8
For low light levels one has to consider two types of measurement er-
rors that deteriorate the performance of the correction system: the photon
noise σ2ph and the read noise σ2r . These variances are given as variance of
the wave-front phase due to photon noise and to read noise of the intensity
measurement. Primot derived these quantities assuming that the seeing disk
is approximately Gaussian and that it is centered (Primot et al., 1990).
Then the form of the phase variance due to signal photon noise is (Rousset,
1994)
π2 1

α0 d 2

σ2ph = 2
[rad ]; (49)
2 Nph λ
where Nph is the total number of photoelectrons, α0 the angular size of the
image and d the diameter of the subaperture. In the diffraction limited case
the image size α0 is equal to λ=d and the variance is proportional to 1=Nph .
In the case of a seeing limited point source with α0 = λ=r0 it is
π2 1
σ2ph = 2 2
(d =r0 ) [rad ]: (50)
2 Nph
The wave-front variance as a function of the detector read noise σd can be
written in a similar fashion (Rousset, 1994)
π2 2 2
 σ 2  d 4
d
σ2r = f Nα0 2
[rad ]; (51)
3 Nph r0
with Nα20 the total number of pixels per Airy disk, and f the quotient between
the area on the detector used for the centroid calculation, and the area of
the seeing disk. (As long as the subaperture diameter is larger than r0 . This
is always the case as the wave-front sensor operates in the visible with r0
typically 10 cm.) If for instance the (square) area on the detector is (200 )2 in
0.700 seeing the quotient f is 10. The case of background photo noise is treated
very similarly by replacing the detector read noise σd by the background
noise σb (Rousset, 1994).
As already noted the wave-front sensor usually operates in the visible
whilst the science camera works in the infrared. In order to convert the wave-
front variances to the infrared they have to be multiplied by (λWFS =λIR )2 .

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26

The number of pixels per Airy disk is determined by the optical design of
the wave-front sensor. As the square of this number goes into the variance
calculation it should be kept small.
Since the reconstruction of the phase is made through a linear process the
noise of each subaperture measurement propagates linearly with
 λ 2 ;

WFS
σ2noise = P(J ) σ2 + σ2 ; (52)
λIR r ph

where P(J) is the factor that describes the error propagation as a function of
the number J of corrected modes. It depends on the properties of the system,
like sensor and mirror geometry, number of sensors and actuators etc. Rigaut
and Gendron, 1992 have derived an expression for Zernike modes that is
given as
P(J )  0:34 ln(J ) + 0:10: (53)
The error budget of a Shack-Hartmann sensor correcting for J modes can now
be written as
σ2st = ∆J + σ2noise ; (54)
where ∆J is the wave-front fitting error after removing the first J Zernike
modes given in Eq.(41). The implications of the dynamic behaviour of the
turbulence will be discussed in Sect. 3.3. It is interesting to note that the
variance due to read noise (σ2r ∝ (D=r0 )4 ) depends much stronger on the
seeing conditions than ∆J ∝ (D=r0 )5 3 and σ2ph ∝ (D=r0 )2 .
=

3.1.2. Curvature sensor

This technique was introduced by Roddier (1988). The adaptive optics system
installed at the CFHT3 in 1996 was the first large system to use a curva-
ture sensor, and it has shown excellent performance. The obstacle preventing
the wide spread use of this technique is the sophisticated theory behind the
concept.
The curvature sensor relies on measuring the intensity distribution in two
different planes on either side of the focus using the normalised difference
between the distributions. This difference is a measure for the curvature of
the wave-front in the telescope pupil and for the wave-front tilt at the aperture
edge. The principle is sketched in Figure 9. The two intensity distributions are
recorded in the two planes P1 and P2 , a distance δ from the telescope focal
plane. The figure displays the effect of a local curvature of the wave-front:
the curved wave-front leads to a local excess of illumination in plane P1 and
to a lack of illumination at the corresponding position in P2 as the light is
spread out. The two planes of observation have to be far enough apart so that
geometrical optics is a good approximation, i.e. ( f ; δ)λ=r0  r0 δ= f .
3 The CFHT is the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. It has a 3.6-m
primary mirror.

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 27
Telescope
aperture

P1 P2
δ δ

f
Figure 9. Principle of the curvature sensor. The gray lines show the rays from a curved part of
the wave-front that form a focus before the focal plane, leading to a local increase in intensity
in plane P1 and a decrease in P2 .

However, for extended sources and different degrees of correction the sit-
uation becomes more complicated. The local resolution of the wave-front
measurement, given by the size of the subapertures in the Shack-Hartmann
sensor, is determined by the size of the blur that is caused e.g. by the small
piece of curved wave-front in Figure 9. If the separation δ is too small this
blur is too small to be measured. Also, if the detector pixels are too large
this blur cannot be resolved and the mode corresponding to aberrations of
this size cannot be measured. Thus, the separation δ and the pixel size have
to be adjusted according to the required degree of correction. An extended
source has the same effect as a larger seeing disk, and the separation has to be
adjusted accordingly. The conclusion is: for the measurement of high orders,
δ must be larger than for low orders, and for extended sources, δ must be
larger than for point sources (Rousset, 1994).
The normalised difference between the two intensity distributions is (Rod-
dier, 1988):
I+ (x; y) ; I; (x; y) ∂
 
c(x; y) = ∝ φ(ρ; θ)Ψ ; ∇2 φ(ρ; θ) ; (55)
I+ (x; y) + I; (x; y) ∂ρ
1 ∂ ∂ 1 ∂2
where ∇2 = ρ ∂ρ (ρ ∂ρ ) + ρ2 ∂θ2 is the Laplacian operator representing the cur-
∂φ
vature of the wave-front. The wave-front radial tilt ∂ρ has to be weighted by
an impulse distribution Ψ around the pupil edge. The advantage of the curva-
ture measurement over the slope measurement in a Shack-Hartmann sensor is
the very low correlation of the local curvature over the wave-front. Measur-
ing statistically independent signals gives a better estimate of the wave-front
(Roddier et al., 1991). Eq.(55) is the irradiance transport equation for paraxial
beam propagation providing a general description of incoherent wave-front
sensing methods (Roddier, 1990a).
We have modelled a 7-element curvature sensor displayed in Figure 10 (Glin-
demann and Rees, 1994). Using the geometrical optics approximation ( f ;

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28

II
III I

VII

IV VI
V

ρ=0 0.8 1 1.2

Figure 10. Sampling geometry for a low order curvature sensor. The illumination is integrated
over each segment. The width of the impulse distribution Ψ is displayed by the dashed lines.

δ)λ=r0  r0 δ= f one finds that δ is 90 mm for a f/35 beam on a 3.5-m tele-
scope for λ = 2:2 µm and r0 = 0:6 m. Since we model a low order system we
used δ = 20 mm. The signal in Eq.(55) has to be integrated over the area
of each segment where the width of the impulse distribution for the 6 edge
segments has to be carefully adjusted. We have assumed that Ψ has a width
of 20% of the pupil diameter and that it has a rectangular shape. Thus, we
obtain the signal cI at detector I in Figure 10 by integrating the curvature for
ρ = 0:5 to 1 and θ = 0 to π=3 and by integrating ∂φ ∂ρ for ρ = 0:8 to 1:2 and
θ = 0 to π=3. The result is
p
cI ∝ 0:4 3 a2 + 0:4 a3 ; 2:5 a4 + 1:489 a5 + 0:8598 a6 ; 5:736 a7 : : : :

One obtains a set of seven equations relating the signals of the sensors to
the Zernike coefficients. This set of equations can be written in matrix form
similar to Eq.(48) as
c = Θc~a;
~ (56)
with ~c the vector containing the measured curvature and gradients for the edge
segments, ~a the vector containing the coefficients of the Zernike polynomial
and Θc the interaction matrix. A simple least-squares routine was used to
solve this equation.
A comparative study between the 22 Shack-Hartmann sensor discussed
in the previous section and the 7-element sensor discussed here has shown
that the performance is very similar down to very low light levels (Glinde-
mann and Rees, 1994; Rousset, 1994).
The measurement errors of the curvature sensor were investigated by Rod-
dier et al. (1991). He found that in open loop operation the error propagation
coefficient P(J ) (Eq. 53) increases with J and not with ln(J ). However, in

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 29

closed loop operation there is no significant difference between the two meth-
ods (Roddier, 1995). Thus, curvature sensor systems are as well suited for
high order correction as Shack-Hartmann systems. As a consequence, the
adaptive optics system of the VLT4 Interferometer will have a 60-element
curvature wavefront sensor at each 8-m telescope (Bonaccini et al., 1998).

3.2. WAVE - FRONT RECONSTRUCTION

In the last section, we have assumed that the modes of a polynomial, in our ex-
ample the Zernike modes, are reconstructed from the information obtained by
the wave-front sensor. Apart from this modal reconstruction of the wave-front
there exists also the zonal approach where the error in e.g. each subimage
of a Shack-Hartmann sensor is minimised by tilting the wave-front in the
subaperture. In a curvature sensor system this approach is even more intuitive
in combination with a bimorph mirror (see Sect. 3.4). Here, the curvature of
the mirror surface is changed by applying a voltage to the mirror actuator and,
in principle, the measured curvature signal from a single detector element can
be hard-wired to the corresponding actuator of the bimorph mirror (Roddier
et al., 1991).
In both cases the local piston of the wave-front elements in each sub-
aperture has to be treated separately in order to smoothly model the wave-
front. This requires some sophisticated reconstruction techniques (Rousset,
1994). Together with the high accuracy that is required in the opto-mechanical
alignment to ensure a precise correspondence between the wave-front sensor
elements and the deformable mirror actuators, the zonal approach becomes
less attractive than the modal approach.
The matrix equation for the modal reconstruction M~ =Θ ~
sh a (Eq. 48) con-
necting the coefficients of the Zernike modes ~a with the wave-front slopes M ~

can be solved by a least-squares approach:

~a = (ΘTsh Θsh );1 ΘTsh M

~ : (57)

The product of matrices (ΘTsh Θsh );1 ΘTsh is called reconstructor matrix. This
method can be extended to include the noise characteristics by adding a noise
vector to the vector of slopes
~
M n=M
~ +~
N: (58)

To solve this equation the covariance matrix of the noise <~N~N T > has to be
calculated. Since the two noise sources, the photon noise and the read noise,
are statistically independent for each subaperture the covariance matrix is
4 The ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer located on Cerro Paranal in northern
Chile consists of four 8-m telescopes separated by up to 130m and of three 1.8-m telescopes
separated by up to 200m.

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30

diagonal. If the noise variance of each subaperture is the same and equal to
σ2noise the result of the least-square minimisation can be written as (see e.g.
(Melsa and Cohn, 1978))

a = (ΘTsh Θsh + σ2noise < ~a~aT

~
;1);1 ΘT M
> ~ ; (59)
sh

where < ~a~aT > is the covariance matrix of the Zernike coefficients This
technique to reconstruct the wave-front is also called maximum likelihood
technique as by determining ~a one maximises the probability of producing
the measurements M. ~ This method has recently been improved by implement-

ing knowledge about the correlation of the slopes between the subapertures
(Sallberg et al., 1997).
The coefficients ~v of the polynomials of the deformable mirror (the mirror
modes) are related to the Zernike coefficients ~a through an additional interac-
tion matrix so that a new interaction matrix can be calculated linking the slope
measurements M ~ directly with ~ v. The formalism is the same as above, with
the exception that it might be extremely difficult to calculate the inverse of
the covariance matrix < ~v~vT > for a non-orthonormal set of mirror modes. If
the mirror modes do not exactly match the surface of the mirror the maximum
likelihood technique no longer represents the best estimate of the wave-front
(Roggemann and Welsh, 1996). The minimum-variance method can be used
to circumvent this problem (Wallner, 1983). Here, in order to maximise the
image intensity the variance of the residual wave-front aberrations are min-
imised incorporating the mirror influence function. The practical drawback
is that accurate knowledge of the wave-front and noise statistics, and of the
mirror influence function are required.

3.3. C LOSED LOOP OPERATION

So far, the properties of wave-front sensors have been discussed for the static
case of a single measurement. In order to investigate the performance of
adaptive optics systems the dynamic behaviour of turbulence has to be con-
sidered. In Sect. 2.6 and 2.7, the temporal characteristics of image motion
and of the Zernike modes have been discussed. These properties are used in
the following investigation of the dynamic requirements of adaptive optics
systems.
Two parameters have to be adjusted according to the number of modes
that are corrected: the gain and the bandwidth. The gain should be different
for each mode depending on the accuracy of the measurement that can be
determined experimentally.
The required bandwidth for full correction was given by Greenwood (1977).
He assumed a system that in the static case corrects the wave-front perfectly,
and that all aberrations are caused by the finite bandwidth of the control
system. He then used the power spectrum Φt ( f ) of the phase fluctuations

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 31

of the wave-front (Eq. 28) and applied the transfer function T ( f ) Greenwood
(1977)) to calculate the correction bandwidth fG that was subsequently called
the Greenwood frequency. Using the single dominant layer approximation it
is
v̂
fG = 0:43 : (60)
r0
The residual variance of the wave-front can then be calculated as

σ2G = ( fG = f3dB )5 = 3 2
[rad ] : (61)

If the servo bandwidth f3dB of the closed loop system is chosen equal to fG
the variance is 1 rad2 which is equivalent to a Strehl ratio of about 35%.
This variance has to be compared to the residual variance after correcting
e.g. 50 Zernike modes perfectly. Using Eq.(42), one finds that it is ∆50 =
0:25 rad2 in 0.900 seeing, corresponding to a Strehl ratio of 77%. Although
Greenwood’s assumption of a perfect system cannot be compared easily to
the case of removing only a limited number of Zernike modes – leaving
a residual phase variance even for infinite bandwidth – it is clear that the
Greenwood frequency with the residual variance of 1 rad2 is too small for a
good correction.
In the case of a laser guide star adaptive optics system the image motion
has to be measured with a natural guide star (see Davies et al. in this issue).
If it is the goal to reduce the single axis rms image motion ∆θ to 0:25λ=D the
tracking bandwidth is (see for example Glindemann (1997a))
v̂
fh o
: :; T= 0:25 : (62)
r0
Tyler, 1994 investigated pure Zernike tilt and the centroid tilt separately, and
he presented a similar result.
The subsequent variance of the wave-front phase due to the residual image
jitter alone is
σ2h o T = ( fh o T = f3dB )5 3 0:33 [rad2 ]:
: : : :
=
(63)
The very simple assumptions that lead to these results make it impossible to
draw far reaching conclusions. However, it is fair to say that the tip-tilt system
has to be run at almost the same frequency as the higher order system in order
to add an acceptable amount to the variance of the wave-front. Conan et al.,
1995 came to a very similar conclusion discussing the temporal power spectra
of the Zernike modes that are displayed in Figure 7.
If for example the effective wind speed v̂ is 15 m=sec and if r0 is 60 cm
which is equivalent to 0.7600 seeing at 2.2 µm the bandwidth for full correction
according to the Greenwood criteria is fG = 11 Hz, and the required tracking
bandwidth is fh o T = 6 Hz. The respective tracking frequencies are about
: :;

110 Hz and 60 Hz. It should be emphasised that this can only give an idea

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32

about the order of magnitude since the adaptive optics system is not perfect
as Greenwood assumed, and, as noted above, since a residual variance of
1 rad2 is too large. In practice one can start at about 2–4 times the Greenwood
frequency and determine the optimum bandwidth by examining the image
quality achieved.

3.3.1. Error budget – limiting magnitude

We can now write down the error budget of an adaptive optics system with a
Shack-Hartmann sensor:
σ2 = ∆J + σ2noise + σ2bw ; (64)
with ∆J the fitting error that represents the wave-front variance due to the un-
corrected Zernike modes, σnoise the measurement noise that is due to photon
and read-noise (see Eqs. 52 and 53), and σbw the error due to finite bandwidth.
The error due to the finite bandwidth was discussed in the last section and
given to be
σ2bw = σ2G = ( fG = f3dB )5 3 rad2 ;
=
(65)
where the Greenwood frequency is fG = 0:43 v̂=r0 . A numerical example will
illuminate the situation.
We assume a situation when the seeing is 0.7600 in the near infrared at
2.2 µm on a 3.5-m telescope. The Fried parameter is then r0 = 0:6 m. A
Shack-Hartmann sensor, operating in the visible with λWFS = 0:5 µm and 55
subapertures (d = 0:7 m) is used to correct for 15 Zernike modes. In the table
the seeing parameters are summarised:

Wavelength 0.5 µm 2.2 µm

Seeing 100 0.7600
d =r0 7 1.1

The discussion starts with the fitting error, i.e. the best variance that we can
theoretically achieve if correcting 15 Zernike modes.
It is ∆J = 0:028(D=r0 )5 3 = 0:56 rad2 corresponding to a Strehl ratio of 57%.
=

If we want to add less than 0.2 rad2 to the variance, i.e. if the Strehl is to
stay above 45%, one can for a first iteration allow 0.1 rad2 for the noise error
and equally 0.1 rad2 for the bandwidth error. The Greenwood formula can be
used to estimate the required bandwidth and then the star magnitude can be
determined that provides enough photons to have less than 0.1 rad2 for the
noise error.
With v̂ = 15 m/ sec and r0 = 0:6 m the Greenwood frequency is 11 Hz.
Since we want to add less than 0.1 rad2 to the variance the bandwidth f3dB
has to be 44 Hz, and, thus, the sampling rate of the Shack-Hartmann sensor
has to be 10 times the bandwidth, i.e. about 450 Hz. The exposure time is then
about 2 msec.

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 33

The measurement noise in a Shack-Hartmann sensor is given by Eqs. 50

and 51. Assuming a wave-front sensor with a pixel size of 0.7200 and a subim-
age size of 200 , and correcting J = 15 Zernike modes (P(J )  1), yields
 σd
2 12
σ2noise = 40 +
2
[rad ] : (66)
Nph Nph

If the read-noise is σd = 5 electrons, which is typical for CCD cameras we

need about 600 photons per subaperture in 2 msec to reduce the additional
variance to 0.1 rad2 . This corresponds to a star with mV = 10, which is a
realistic number for the set of parameters used here. If the requirements for
;5 3
the bandwidth are relaxed the variance σ2bw increases with f3dB and σ2noise
=

decreases with Nph 2 as long as the second term in Eq. 66, remains small.

Thus, reducing the bandwidth by a factor of two increases the σ2bw by a factor
of 3 but it reduces the read noise by a factor of 4 resulting in a net gain
in performance. However, since the concept of the Greenwood frequency is
fairly crude and one should not overestimate the significance of the calculated
values for small changes.
One parameter that has not been treated so far is the isoplanatic angle
that determines the maximum distance between the object and the guide star.
This depends heavily on the degree of correction and the layer structure of
the atmosphere. Rigaut, 1994 has investigated this quantity and found that,
depending on the tolerated additional variance values between 1000 and 3000
can be expected in the near infrared. If a guide star of 10th magnitude has
to be no more than 3000 from the astronomical object the number of objects
that fulfill this requirement is very small. Then the sky coverage is on average
below 0.1% on a 4-m class telescope.
However, if a laser guide star can be placed anywhere in the sky the situa-
tion changes dramatically. Only the tip-tilt correction relies on a natural guide
star, and here the requirements are much relaxed compared to the full correc-
tion. Using the full aperture D with D=r0 λ=0 5µm = 35 for the calculation of
; :

the measurement noise σ2noise one obtains

 σd
2 312
σ2noise = 210 +
2
[rad ] : (67)
Nph Nph

If the tolerated additional variance is 0.1 rad2 and the read noise σd = 5
electrons, 3000 photons per exposure are required.
The bandwidth f3dB for tip-tilt correction with σ2h o T = 0:1rad2 can be
: :;

calculated using Eq.(63), yielding f3dB = 0:5 v̂=r0 = 12:5 Hz, resulting in
a tracking frequency of 125 Hz and an exposure time of 8 msec. Here, the
tip-tilt system has to run faster than for pure tip-tilt tracking (Glindemann,
1997a) because the error has to be reduced to the absolute value of 0.1 rad2

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34

independent of seeing conditions. 3000 photons per 8 msec exposure time

correspond to a magnitude of about mV = 13. This limiting magnitude and
the larger isoplanatic angle increase the sky coverage in the K-band to about
15% at the galactic pole and about 95% at the galactic equator.
The cone effect, however, slightly deteriorates the achievable Strehl ratio.
Since the light of the laser guide star does not travel the same light path as the
natural star light there is a fraction of the turbulence that cannot be corrected.
This reduction in Strehl ratio is less than 20% in average seeing conditions
on a 4-m class telescope but it goes up to 50% on an 8-m telescope.

3.4. D EFORMABLE MIRRORS

The earliest developments of deformable mirrors aimed at TV projection

systems in the early 1950’s. In the so-called Eidophor system, a mirror in
a vacuum chamber is covered with a thin layer of oil upon which a modulated
beam from an electron gun is deposited in a rastered pattern. Local forces of
surface repulsion are induced forming transient changes in the slope of the oil
film. The wave-front is then locally tilted by refraction in traversing the film.
The optical system of the TV projector blocks the tilted beam, and the point
on the mirror remains dark in projection. Bright spots appear in the projected
image of the mirror where the oil film is flat. The TV image is modulated
onto the mirror by modulating the beam from the electron gun similar to the
process of forming an image with a cathode ray tube.
For the application in adaptive optics systems the ability of the Eidophor
mirror to shape the wave-front with local tilts was used. Babcock, 1953 sug-
gested to use this mirror in his proposal for an adaptive optics system. How-
ever, the technological problems at that time were too large to actually build
the system.

Continuous
electrode

2 layers of
PZT/PMN
a) Segmented mirror b) Continuous mirror with ceramics c) Bimorph mirror with
with discrete tip-tilt/piston discrete piston actuators application dependent
actuators (e.g. PZT stacks ) pattern of individual
control electrodes
Figure 11. Three classes of deformable mirrors. (a), a segmented mirror with tip-tilt/piston ac-
tuators behind each segment, (b) continuous facesheet mirrors with individual piston actuation,
and an example of a bimorph (metal/PZT or metal/PMN) mirror (c).

Today, there are mainly three classes of deformable mirrors displayed in Fig-
ure 11: The segmented mirror with single tip-tilt/piston elements and two
mirror types with a continuous surface, the continuous mirror where an array
of actuators behind the mirror surface pushes and pulls the mirror by applying

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 35

a force perpendicular to the surface, and the bimorph mirror where voltages
applied between the continuous electrode and the control electrodes change
the curvature of the mirror (see Ribak (1994) for a review).
Segmented mirrors have a number of advantages over continuous mirrors:
the segments can be moved independent of each other, they can be replaced
easily, and the single segments can be combined to form rather large mir-
rors. In the section on wave-front sensors (Sect. 3.1) it was discussed that
by associating each sub-aperture of a Shack-Hartmann sensor to a segment
of the mirror the high order adaptive optics systems consist basically of tip-
tilt systems that are run in parallel. Although this is appealing because of
its conceptual simplicity, in addition to the single segment tip-tilt correction,
one has to process the data to obtain the piston signals that are necessary
to reconstruct a continuous wave-front. Also the alignment between the sub-
apertures of the Shack-Hartmann sensor and the single segments has to be
very precise. The disadvantages of segmented mirrors include problems with
diffraction effects from the individual segments and the intersegment align-
ment. In infrared applications the gaps between the segments can be the
source of infrared radiation that deteriorates the image. Only few adaptive
optics systems with segmented mirrors have been built for solar (Acton and
Smithson, 1992) and stellar (Doel et al., 1990) astronomy.
Bimorph mirrors have their name from the structure that controls their
shape. Piezoelectric bimorph plates usually consist of either a metal plate and
a piezoelectric plate (e.g. PZT or PMN ceramic) or of two piezoelectric plates
which are bonded together. The latter layering is often called the standard
bimorph whilst the first one is sometimes called unimorph or monomorph. A
piezoelectric bimorph operates similar to a bimetallic strip in a thermostat. In
a typical serial configuration one part of the bimorph expands and the other
contracts when a voltage is applied between the two parts. The result is a
bending of the entire structure. As shown in Figure 11c discrete bimorph (or
bending) actuators are created by attaching control electrodes to the bottom
side of the bimorph structure. The pattern of the control electrodes can be
such that it corresponds to the geometry of a curvature sensor (see Figure 10).
The local radius of curvature of the bimorph mirror changes proportional
to the applied voltage (on a given control electrode). This behaviour make
bimorph mirrors the natural counterparts of the curvature sensor. As noted
in Sect. 3.1, it was discussed to feed the signal from the curvature sensor
directly to the bimorph mirror (Roddier et al., 1991). This design is similar
in its conceptual simplicity to the idea of using a mirror segment for each
subaperture of a Shack-Hartmann sensor. However, the requirements for the
optical alignment are similar. The bimorph mirrors that are commercially
available used to have only a low number of actuators, e.g. the bimorph mirror
in the CFHT adaptive optics system has 19 actuators (see Sect. 3.1). In the
meantime, bimoroph mirrors with 36 actuators are available and tested in a

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36

curvature sensor system (Graves et al., 1998), and mirrors with 60 actuators
are being designed.
Piezo-electric mirrors, i.e. continuous mirrors with an array of piezo-electric
actuators expanding perpendicular to the mirror surface (Figure 11b) are in
widespread use now. They are available with up to 350 actuators, and the
technology is well tested and very reliable. They were developed originally
to project high power laser beams on military targets when segmented mir-
rors produce too much scattered light (Tyson, 1998). The typical voltage that
is required to move the actuators is below 100 V, the bandwidth is in the
kHz range, and the typical stroke is in the 5 µm range. Whilst this is suf-
ficient for high order correction the tip and tilt induced by the turbulence
requires a larger tilting angle so that an extra tip-tilt mirror is needed. Some
manufacturers are now using electrostrictive material like a lead-magnesium-
niobate (PMN) crystal that is similar to the piezo-electric lead-zirconate-
titanate (PZT) ceramics, but that displays a smaller hysteresis and a better
motion control.
Both types of continuous surface mirrors avoid the diffraction effects as-
sociated with the single segments and the intersegment alignment problem.
Here, the problems arise from the complexity of the algorithm to control the
mirror surface as the actuators are not allowed to move independent of each
other. If one actuator is set to the maximum voltage its next neighbour must
not be set to the minimum voltage. Otherwise the mirror surface would be
damaged. Also, changing the voltage of a particular actuator usually affects
the shape of the mirror surface at the location of its neighbours.
There are several new developments ranging from very large deformable
mirrors that can replace the telescope secondary (Salinari et al., 1993), to ex-
tremely small units that are based on microelectronical manufacturing meth-
ods (Vdovin and Sarro, 1995). A completely different class of wave-front
actuation is represented by the liquid crystal half-wave phase shifter espe-
cially suitable for narrow band applications (Love et al., 1995). The LBT5
will be equipped with an adaptive secondary with 1000 actuators that has a
diameter of 870 mm and a thickness of 2 mm. It is discussed to use an actuator
design based on loudspeaker technology where the actuator motion is pro-
vided by voice coils. The advantage of the design with an adaptive secondary
is the conceptual elegance and the low number of reflections that improve
both the optical throughput and the infrared background (Hill, 1996).

5 The Large Binocular Telescope consists of two 8.4-m telescopes separated by 14.4 m
(center to center). The Telescope is currently under construction on Mount Graham in Arizona,
USA

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4. Outlook – Multi-layer adaptive optics

The size of the corrected field of view of an adaptive optics system can be
increased by using multiple deformable mirrors correcting multiple turbulent
layers individually (see Figure 12) (Beckers, 1988). In recent years, several
groups have explored methods of measuring the turbulent layers individually,
and the possible improvements in performance both with respect to increasing
the isoplanatic angle and reducing the cone effect on large telescopes have
been investigated (Johnston and Welsh, 1994; Ribak et al., 1996; Berkefeld,
1998). In the following, we discuss a new method for measuring separately
the turbulence in multiple atmospheric layers by combining intensity mea-
surements like in a curvature sensor with wave-front gradient measurements
in a Shack-Hartmann sensor (Glindemann and Berkefeld, 1996).

Strehl ratio

0.8
two deformable mirrors
0.6

0.4

0.2 single deformable mirror

20 40 60 80 100 120
angular distance [arcsec]
Figure 12. Strehl ratio as a function of angular distance from the optical axis for conventional
adaptive optics with a single deformable mirror (grey curve) and for multi-layer adaptive
optics with two deformable mirrors (black curve). The calculations were performed using a
measured Cn2 profile at Calar Alto (Klückers et al.(1997)). The figure is taken from Berkefeld
(1998).

The problem of measuring the atmospheric turbulence can be reduced to

imaging a phase object, i.e. an object affecting only the phase of the wave-
front. This is a common problem in microscopy, and defocusing is an old
cure. Then, the phase object that is invisible in the focused image shows
up in the intensity distribution. If the phase varies only slightly, (φ(x)  1)
the image intensity is proportional to the curvature of the phase distribution.
Thus, the scintillation on the ground could be used for an estimate of the high
altitude layers. In order to reconstruct the phase distribution completely, the
intensity distribution has to be measured in two planes positioned symmetri-

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38

cally to the image plane of the phase object. The curvature sensor is based on
this idea.
To simplify the explanation, we start with two dominant layers that carry
the bulk of the turbulence. Then, the intensity distribution I1 (x1 ) in the con-
jugate plane L01 of layer L1 in Figure 13 would be determined solely by the
turbulence in layer L2 . The turbulence in layer L1 has no effect on the intensity
distribution in its image plane, L01 . Vice versa, the intensity distribution in L02
is caused only by the turbulent layer in L1 .
Assuming that the phase variation is weak, with φ(x)  1, the complex
amplitude immediately behind layer L1 can then be written as

u1 (x1 ) = 1 + iφ1 (x1 ):

The wave-front amplitude u; 2 (x2 ) immediately before L2 is the Fresnel diffrac-

tion pattern of the turbulence in L1 , which is approximately
s12 ∂2 φ1 (x2 )
u;
2 (x2 ) = 1 + iφ1 (x2 ) + ; (68)
2k ∂x22

with k = 2π=λ. The turbulence in layer L2 adds to the imaginary part of

u;
2 (x2 ) yielding

s12 ∂2 φ1 (x2 )
u2 (x2 ) = 1 + i (φ1 (x2 ) + φ2 (x2 )) + : (69)
2k ∂x22
Calculating the wave-front in image space, one has to be careful to include
the phase disturbances of both layers. Thus, the complex amplitude u02 (x02 ) in
L02 is, neglecting imperfections of the imaging optics, identical to u2 (x2 ) in
L2 . However, to calculate the wave-front in L01 the turbulence in L2 has to be
considered. One then finds that the wave-front phase both in planes L01 and L02
is equal to the sum of the phases, φ1 + φ2 , and that the intensity in L01 resp. L02
can be written as
s012 ∂2 φ2 (x01 )
I10 (x01 ) = 1;
2k ∂x012
and

s012 ∂2 φ1 (x02 )
I20 (x02 ) = 1+
2k ∂x022

The intensity distribution in L01 is unaffected by φ1 and the intensity distri-

bution in L02 is unaffected by φ2 . Using the difference of the intensity distri-
butions like a curvature sensor yields the second derivative of the sum of the
phases. This is the result of a measurement with a curvature sensor neglecting
the wave-front radial tilt.
Using Shack-Hartmann sensors in both planes L01 and L02 , the resulting
phase φ1 + φ2 of the wave-front is measured in each plane by determining

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 39

the wave-front tilt in each subaperture. Additionally, the intensity distribution

can be measured in both planes by integrating over each subaperture of the
lenslet array. The normalised signal I10 ; I20 =I10 + I20 is the quotient of the second
derivative of the sum and of the difference of the phases. As the sum of the
phases is measured directly, the difference of the second derivatives can be
determined and, thus, the phase curvature in both layers.
The isoplanatic angle can now be enlarged by observing multiple stars
with the Shack-Hartmann sensor as displayed in Figure 13. The phase as well
as the intensity distribution can be measured for each star individually. Then,
the information about the different layers can be stitched together to steer the
deformable mirrors in the conjugate planes of L1 and L2 .

s 12
F s'12
L1 L2 L'1
L'2
Figure 13. Illustration of the multiplexer mode of the Shack-Hartmann curvature sensor. For
the sake of clarity only one lenslet array is displayed. In each subimage the total intensity and
the centroid position can be measured separately and, thus, different patches of the wave-front
can be reconstructed.

Before placing the Shack-Hartmann curvature sensors in the conjugate planes

of the turbulent layers their altitude has to be determined by e.g. using a
method suggested by Vernin and Roddier (1973).
So far, the discussion has been restricted to two layers. If the turbulence
profile indicates multiple strong layers there has to be a Shack-Hartmann
curvature sensor in each conjugate plane of those layers. The position of the
deformable mirrors can be adjusted to correspond to the conjugate planes
of the layers. The number of deformable mirrors in a real system is obvi-
ously fixed. However, the system could be designed with several deformable
mirrors using only the required number.
The isoplanatic angle is limited by the separation of the stars used for
the measurement of the turbulence. The practical limitation is given by the
field of view of each subimage of the Shack-Hartmann sensor. To correct 30
Zernike modes one needs about 77 subapertures each of which with a field
of view of 303000 . Then, with a pixel scale of roughly 0.700 every subimage
has a size of 4242 pixels, and the total size of the CCD is 300300 pixels.

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40

5. Conclusions

We have discussed effects of imaging through turbulence and methods to

improve the reduced image quality with adaptive optics. The detailed de-
scription of existing adaptive optics systems has shown that the technical
requirements are met by current technology. There are now about 10 tele-
scopes in the world where adaptive optics is used on a more or less regular
base. One can expect that this technology will mature considerably over the
next few years, and that the impact on astronomical research will become sig-
nificant. In particular the new 10-m class telescopes that will all be equipped
with adaptive optics will contribute to the scientific progress since diffraction
limited images from these telescopes means a factor of 20 to 50 improvement
over seeing limited images.
On a more modest scale, simple tip-tilt systems improve the peak intensity
by 70 to 300% and the FWHM by about 0.200 in the near infrared, increasing
the scientific output of a telescope without any significant disadvantage. Thus,
it is very worthwhile to equip infrared telescopes with tip-tilt systems.
The limit of resolution is an area where large ground based telescopes are
superior to observations from space telescopes since the limit for the size of
a monolithic mirror in space is considerably below 10 m. Other advantages of
ground based telescopes are cost, lifetime, and flexibility as improvements or
new instruments can be fitted easily.
If it comes to field of view and sky coverage, so far, the space telescopes
have an advantage over observations from the ground. We have discussed
methods to increase the corrected field of view of ground based observations
by using multi-layer adaptive optics, and to increase the sky coverage by
creating laser guide stars. For multi-layer adaptive optics one has to tackle the
problems of separating the influence of single turbulent layers on the imaging
process, and of applying the correction to the proper layers with multiple
deformable mirrors. Laser guide stars provide a method to determine the aber-
rations caused by the turbulence with the exception of the wave-front slope.
Although this already increases the sky coverage drastically one has to be able
to deduce the tip-tilt information from the laser guide star in order to achieve
100% sky coverage. The research has to concentrate on these two areas to
make observations from the ground competitive with space observations.
Since angular resolution is of key importance in most areas of astronom-
ical research the desire for higher resolution does not stop at 10 m apertures.
However, rather than envisioning larger monolithic telescopes, interferom-
eter arrays are planned and tested, coherently switching together the light
from single telescopes. Then, the limit of resolution is given by the longest
baseline. The most challenging projects in this area are the interferometric
connection of the two Keck Telescopes, the VLTI connecting eventually the
four Very Large Telescopes in Paranal, Chile and the interferometric mode

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 41

of the LBT. Each of the single 8-10 m apertures requires adaptive optics to
increase the peak intensity and the accuracy of the measurement. The coher-
ently combined beams display a fringe pattern that moves around randomly
depending on the wave-front slope between the single apertures. This cannot
be corrected for by the adaptive optics systems in each telescope. Similar to
the problem of the tip-tilt measurement with a natural guide star in a laser
guide star system one needs a natural guide star to stabilise the fringe motion.
Here, one faces the same problems as with single telescope adaptive op-
tics. The correction frequency for fringe tracking is affected by the telescope
baseline and by the observing wavelength. This determines the limiting mag-
nitude. If the scientific object is not bright enough to serve as a guide star
there has to be a star of suitable brightness usually within a few arcsec of
the scientific object. Then, one can use the guide star to stabilise the fringe
motion, and one can integrate on the scientific object. Increasing the angle
between the object and the guide star is most desirable since it improves
the sky coverage. This technique has to be mastered in order to make tele-
scope interferometers useful. The experience with adaptive optics systems is
a stepping stone to solving these problems.

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