OPTIMIZING CLOSED-LOOP ADAPTIVE-OPTICS PERFORMANCE WITH USE OF MULTIPLE CONTROL BANDWIDTHS

The performance of a closed-loop adaptive-optics system may in princip le be improved by selection of distinct and independently optimized co ntrol bandwidths for separate components, or modes, of the wave-front- distortion profile. We describe a method for synthesizing and optimizi ng a multiple-bandwidth adaptive-optics control system from performanc e estimates previously derived for single-bandwidth control systems op erating over a range of bandwidths. The approach is applicable to adap tive-optics systems that use either one or several wave-front sensing beacons and also to systems that include multiple deformable mirrors f or atmospheric-turbulence compensation across an extended field of vie w. Numerical results are presented for the case of an atmospheric-turb ulence profile consisting of a single translating phase screen with Ko lmogorov statistics, a Shack-Hartmann wave-front sensor with from 8 to 16 subapertures across the aperture of the telescope, and a continuou s-face-sheet deformable mirror with actuators conjugate to the corners of the wave-front-sensor subapertures. The use of multiple control ba ndwidths significantly relaxes the wave-front-sensor noise level that is permitted for the adaptive-optics system to operate near the perfor mance limit imposed by fitting error. Nearly all of this reduction is already achieved through the use of a control system that uses only tw o distinct bandwidths, one of which is the zero bandwidth.