PHASE-COMPENSATION EXPERIMENT WITH A 37-ELEMENT ADAPTIVE OPTICS SYSTEM

An experimental study on phase compensation for turbulent effects with a 37-element adaptive optics system is performed in both a simulated turbulence cell and in a real atmosphere. The experimental results dem onstrate that the compensated Strehl ratio S-0,, which is influenced m ainly by the deformable-mirror fitting error, has a functional form S- 0, = exp[-kappa(d/r(0))(5/3)], where r(0) is Fried's coherence length and d is the average interval of the actuators on the deformable mirro r. The fitting parameter kappa is 0.45. Numerical simulations are also performed with the experimental parameters. The numerical results are in agreement with data obtained in the experiment, which shows that t he direct-tilt phase-reconstruction method used in our four-dimensiona l simulation code is reasonable. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.