Optical turbulence vertical distribution with standard and high resolution at Mt. Graham

TL;DR

This study characterizes the optical turbulence vertical distribution at Mt. Graham using advanced Generalized Scidar techniques, revealing a sharper decrease near the ground and providing valuable data for adaptive optics system optimization.

Contribution

It introduces high-resolution measurements of Cn2 profiles with the HVR-GS technique and analyzes their seasonal variations and implications for adaptive optics systems at Mt. Graham.

Findings

50% turbulence occurs within 80 meters of the ground

Optical turbulence decreases sharply near the ground

Mt. Graham has excellent astroclimatic parameters

Abstract

A characterization of the optical turbulence vertical distribution (Cn2 profiles) and all the main integrated astroclimatic parameters derived from the Cn2 and the wind speed profiles above the site of the Large Binocular Telescope (Mt. Graham, Arizona, US) is presented. The statistic includes measurements related to 43 nights done with a Generalized Scidar (GS) used in standard configuration with a vertical resolution Delta(H)~1 km on the whole 20 km and with the new technique (HVR-GS) in the first kilometer. The latter achieves a resolution Delta(H)~20-30 m in this region of the atmosphere. Measurements done in different periods of the year permit us to provide a seasonal variation analysis of the Cn2. A discretized distribution of Cn2 useful for the Ground Layer Adaptive Optics (GLAO) simulations is provided and a specific analysis for the LBT Laser Guide Star system ARGOS (running in GLAO configuration) case is done including the calculation of the 'gray zones' for J, H and K bands. Mt. Graham confirms to be an excellent site with median values of the seeing without dome contribution epsilon = 0.72", the isoplanatic angle theta0 = 2.5" and the wavefront coherence time tau0= 4.8 msec. We find that the optical turbulence vertical distribution decreases in a much sharper way than what has been believed so far in proximity of the ground above astronomical sites. We find that 50% of the whole turbulence develops in the first 80+/-15 m from the ground. We finally prove that the error in the normalization of the scintillation that has been recently put in evidence in the principle of the GS technique, affects these measurements with an absolutely negligible quantity (0.04").