Design and development of a high-speed Visible Pyramid Wavefront Sensor for the MMT AO system

TL;DR

This paper details the design and development of a high-speed visible pyramid wavefront sensor for the MMT AO system upgrade, including hardware, software, and laboratory testing results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel high-speed visible pyramid wavefront sensor with integrated hardware and software components for advanced adaptive optics applications.

Findings

Laboratory characterization of subsystems completed

Hardware and software integration achieved

On-sky commissioning plan outlined

Abstract

MAPS, MMT Adaptive optics exoPlanet characterization System, is the upgrade of legacy 6.5m MMT adaptive optics system. It is an NSF MSIP-funded project that includes (i) refurbishing of the MMT Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM), (ii) new high sensitive and high spatial order visible and near-infrared pyramid wavefront sensors, and (iii) the upgrade of Arizona Infrared Imager and Echelle Spectrograph (ARIES) and MMT high Precision Imaging Polarimeter (MMTPol) science cameras. This paper will present the design and development of the visible pyramid wavefront sensor. This system consists of an acquisition camera, a fast-steering tip-tilt modulation mirror, a double pyramid, a pupil imaging triplet lens, and a low noise and high-speed frame rate based CCID75 camera. We will report on hardware and software and present the laboratory characterization results of the individual subsystems, and outline the on-sky commissioning plan.