International Journal of Optomechatronics (Dec 2024)

Laboratory demonstration of single-camera PPPP wavefront sensing using neural networks

  • Carlos Gonzalez-Gutierrez,
  • Nazim Ali Bharmal,
  • Jorge Rodriguez-Muro,
  • Alejandro Buendia-Roca,
  • Huizhe Yang,
  • Laurence W. Fitzpatrick,
  • Timothy J. Morris,
  • Francisco Javier de Cos Juez

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/15599612.2024.2386985
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 18, no. 1

Abstract

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Laser guide stars in astronomical adaptive optics systems have the focus anisoplanatism problem, especially for telescopes larger than 4 m in diameter. The Projected Pupil Plane Pattern (PPPP) offers an alternative solution by projecting a collimated laser beam across the telescope’s entire pupil. One significant challenge is dealing with gain-related issues, necessitating the use of two beam profiles obtained simultaneously from two different distances from the telescope pupil. In this work, we explore the integration of a convolutional neural network (CNN) with experimental data emulating PPPP. We investigate how CNNs can significantly simplify the PPPP design by enabling operation with a single beam profile. These results permit the development of the PPPP concept to use a single beam profile without distance-gain degeneracy. In this work, it is shown that a 10% residual error can be achieved for test data randomly chosen over the SNR range of 4 to 12.

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