adaptopt1997paper.doc.docVIP

Laser Guide Stars for Adaptive Optics Paul Withers - Part II Literature Review Atmospheric turbulence degrades the resolution of a telescope. The resolution can be improved with the use of adaptive optics. This technique, which senses the distortions of a stellar wavefront and uses a deformable mirror to correct the wavefront, is only useful for images of small areas of sky. Important limitations of adaptive optics are that only a small proportion of the sky can ever be viewed with it, and that the improvement in resolution is limited by the faintness of the stellar object. Use of a laser guide star almost completely overcomes both these limitations. A laser guide star is a bright spot high in the atmosphere, created by a laser beam, which acts like a very bright star. 1 - The Need For Laser Guide Stars 1.1 - Atmospheric Turbulence Kolmogorov turbulence in the atmosphere creates eddies. These eddies dissipate into smaller and smaller eddies, until molecular friction converts the eddy turbulence into heat. This heat causes spatial and temporal variations in temperature, density, and refractive index [1]. As a result of this refractive index variation, the phase and amplitude values of a stellar wavefront, as measured at a telescope pupil, vary across the pupil and fluctuate with time. Amplitude variations are small, and their effects are usually neglected [1]. The diffraction-limited visible resolution of an 8m telescope is 0.02 arcsec, but the phase variations limit the visible resolution of any telescope to 0.5 arcsec at best [2]. This maximum attainable visible resolution is called the “seeing angle”. 1.2 - Adaptive Optics The astronomical technique of Adaptive Optics (AO) tries to bring the resolution of a telescope closer to its diffraction limit. It does this by measuring the phase variation of the wavefront across the telescope pupil, and using a deformable mirror to correct this distortion (fig. 1). Due to the spatial variation of the refractive index, the