The Planetary Systems Imager Adaptive Optics System: An Initial Optical Design and Performance Analysis Tools for the PSI-Red AO System

TL;DR

This paper presents an initial optical design and performance analysis tools for the PSI-Red adaptive optics system on the Thirty Meter Telescope, aimed at enabling high contrast imaging of exoplanets in the infrared.

Contribution

It introduces a preliminary optical design and simulation tools for the PSI-Red AO system, supporting high contrast science in the 2-5 micron range.

Findings

Design of a two-stage AO system for PSI-Red

Development of end-to-end AO simulation tools

Framework for future contrast ratio demonstrations

Abstract

The Planetary Systems Imager (PSI) is a proposed instrument for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) that provides an extreme adaptive optics (AO) correction to a multi-wavelength instrument suite optimized for high contrast science. PSI's broad range of capabilities, spanning imaging, polarimetry, integral field spectroscopy, and high resolution spectroscopy from 0.6-5 microns, with a potential channel at 10 microns, will enable breakthrough science in the areas of exoplanet formation and evolution. Here, we present a preliminary optical design and performance analysis toolset for the 2-5 microns component of the PSI AO system, which must deliver the wavefront quality necessary to support infrared high contrast science cases. PSI-AO is a two-stage system, with an initial deformable mirror and infrared wavefront sensor providing a common wavefront correction to all PSI science instruments followed by a dichroic that separates "PSI-Red" (2-5 microns) from "PSI-Blue" (0.5-1.8 microns). To meet the demands of visible-wavelength high contrast science, the PSI-Blue arm will include a second deformable mirror and a visible-wavelength wavefront sensor. In addition to an initial optical design of the PSI-Red AO system, we present a preliminary set of tools for an end-to-end AO simulation that in future work will be used to demonstrate the planet-to-star contrast ratios achievable with PSI-Red.