MAVIS: system modelling and performance prediction

TL;DR

This paper presents the MAVIS adaptive optics system, combining analytical and simulation methods to evaluate its performance, sky coverage, and parameter sensitivity for optical astronomy in the southern sky.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive performance prediction and analysis framework for the MAVIS MCAO system, including baseline performance and sky coverage estimates.

Findings

Achieves 15% Strehl ratio in V band under standard conditions

Sky coverage exceeds 50% in the south galactic pole

Performance sensitive to system parameters and atmospheric conditions

Abstract

The MCAO Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph (MAVIS) Adaptive Optics Module has very demanding goals to support science in the optical: providing 15% SR in V band on a large FoV of 30arcsec diameter in standard atmospheric conditions at Paranal. It will be able to work in closed loop on up to three natural guide stars down to H=19, providing a sky coverage larger than 50% in the south galactic pole. Such goals and the exploration of a large MCAO system parameters space have required a combination of analytical and end- to-end simulations to assess performance, sky coverage and drive the design. In this work we report baseline performance, statistical sky coverage and parameters sensitivity analysis done in the phase-A instrument study.