Experimental validation of single-iteration multigrid wavefront reconstruction at the Palomar Observatory

L. Lessard, D. MacMynowski, M. West, A. Bouchez, and S. Lall

Optics Letters 33(18), 2047-2049, 2008.

Single-iteration multigrid (SIMG) wavefront reconstruction schemes were implemented and validated on the adaptive optics system at the Hale 5.1 m telescope at the Palomar Observatory. Results indicate that even the simplest such method produces a performance indistinguishable from that of the standard least-squares reconstructor for both bright and dim guide stars. SIMG provides a dramatic reduction in computational cost when compared to vector-matrix multiplication and can be implemented in parallel, making it the obvious choice for reconstruction in future large-scale adaptive optics systems.

DOI: 10.1364/OL.33.002047

Full text: LeMaWeBoLa2008.pdf