Adaptive Optics system of the Evanescent Wave Coronagraph (EvWaCo): optimised phase plate and DM characterisation

TL;DR

This paper details the development of a bench to characterize the Extreme Adaptive Optics system of the EvWaCo coronagraph, focusing on precise turbulence simulation, deformable mirror characterization, and influence function analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a method to design phase screens with controlled Kolmogorov statistics and provides a comprehensive characterization of the ALPAO deformable mirror for adaptive optics applications.

Findings

Controlled Kolmogorov turbulence simulation achieved

Deformable mirror influence functions characterized in detail

Linearity and offsets of actuators analyzed

Abstract

The Evanescent Wave Coronagraph (EvWaCo) is an achromatic coronagraph mask with adjustable size over the spectral domain [600nm, 900nm] that will be installed at the Thai National Observatory. We present in this work the development of a bench to characterise its Extreme Adaptive Optics system (XAO) comprising a DM192 ALPAO deformable mirror (DM) and a 15x15 Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SH-WFS). In this bench, the turbulence is simulated using a rotating phase plate in a pupil plane. In general, such components are designed using a randomly generated phase screen. Such single realisation does not necessarily provide the wanted structure function. We present a solution to design the printed pattern to ensure that the beam sees a strict and controlled Kolmogorov statistics with the correct 2D structure function. This is essential to control the experimental conditions in order to compare the bench results with the numerical simulations and predictions. This bench is further used to deeply characterise the full 27 mm pupil of the ALPAO DM using a 54x54 ALPAO SH-WFS. We measure the average shape of its influence functions as well as the influence function of each single actuator to study their dispersion. We study the linearity of the actuator amplitude with the command as well as the linearity of the influence function profile. We also study the actuator offsets as well as the membrane shape at 0-command. This knowledge is critical to get a forward model of the DM for the XAO control loop.