OPTIMAL BASES FOR WAVE-FRONT SIMULATION AND RECONSTRUCTION ON ANNULARAPERTURES

For many applications in adaptive optics the eigenfunctions of the pow er spectrum of turbulence-induced distortions on the actual telescope aperture constitute the ideal basis for modeling wave fronts. The math ematical derivation of these functions is reviewed, and a procedure fo r their calculation, allowing for a circular central obscuration and l eaving considerable freedom in the form of the structure function, is described. Examples of wave-front simulations are presented for a rang e of power-law structure functions and for Kolmogorov structure functi ons with an outer scale smaller than the diameter of the region being modeled. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America