Analytical propagation model for underwater free-space optical communication through realistic levels of oceanic absorption and scattering.

Optical communications (OC) through water bodies is an attractive technology for a variety of applications. Thanks to current single-photon detection capabilities, OC receiver systems can reliably decode very weak transmitted signals. This is the regime where pulse position modulation is an ideal scheme. However, there has to be at least one photon that goes through the pupil of the fore optics and lands in the assigned time bin. We estimate the detectable photon budget as a function of range for propagation through ocean water, both open and coastal. We make realistic assumptions about the water's inherent optical properties, specifically, absorption and scattering coefficients, as well as the strong directionality of the scattering phase function for typical hydrosol populations. We adopt an analytical (hence very fast) path-integral small-angle solution of the radiative transfer equation for multiple forward-peaked scattering across intermediate to large optical distances. Integrals are performed both along the directly transmitted beam (whether or not it is still populated) and radially away from it. We use this modeling framework to estimate transmission of a 1 J pulse of 532 nm light through open ocean and coastal waters. Thresholds for single-photon detection per time bin are a few km and a few 100 m. These are indicative estimates that will be reduced in practice due to sensor noise, background light, turbulence, bubbles, and so on, to be included in future work.

Performance of the adaptive optics system for Laser Communications Relay Demonstration's Ground Station 1.

The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration is NASA's multi-year demonstration of laser communication from the Earth to a geosynchronous satellite. The mission currently has two optical ground stations (OGSs), with one in California (OGS1) and one in Hawaii (OGS2). Each ground terminal optical system consists of a high-order adaptive optics (AO) system, a laser transmit system, and a camera for target acquisition. The OGS1 AO system is responsible for compensating for the downlink beam for atmospheric turbulence and coupling it into the modem's single mode fiber. The mission requires a coupling efficiency of 50%, which necessitates a high-order AO system. To achieve this performance, the AO system uses two deformable mirrors with one mirror correcting for low-spatial-frequency aberrations with large amplitude and a second deformable mirror correcting for high-spatial-frequency aberrations with small amplitude. Turbulence is sensed with a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. To meet its performance requirements in the most stressing conditions, the system can operate at frame rates of 20 kHz. This high frame rate is enabled by the design of the real-time control system. We present an overview of both the hardware and software design of the system, and describe the control system and methods of reducing non-common path aberrations. Finally, we show measured system performance.

In-plane effects on segmented-mirror control.

Extremely large optical telescopes are being designed with primary mirrors composed of hundreds of segments. The "out-of-plane" piston, tip, and tilt degrees of freedom of each segment are actively controlled using feedback from relative height measurements between neighboring segments. The "in-plane" segment translations and clocking (rotation) are not actively controlled; however, in-plane motions affect the active control problem in several important ways, and thus need to be considered. We extend earlier analyses by constructing the "full" interaction matrix that relates the height, gap, and shear motion at sensor locations to all six degrees of freedom of segment motion, and use this to consider three effects. First, in-plane segment clocking results in height discontinuities between neighboring segments that can lead to a global control system response. Second, knowledge of the in-plane motion is required both to compensate for this effect and to compensate for sensor installation errors, and thus, we next consider the estimation of in-plane motion and the associated noise propagation characteristics. In-plane motion can be accurately estimated using measurements of the gap between segments, but with one unobservable mode in which every segment clocks by an equal amount. Finally, we examine whether in-plane measurements (gap and/or shear) can be used to estimate out-of-plane segment motion; these measurements can improve the noise multiplier for the "focus-mode" of the segmented-mirror array, which involves pure dihedral angle changes between segments and is not observable with only height measurements.

Fresnel phasing of segmented mirror telescopes.

Shack-Hartmann (S-H) phasing of segmented telescopes is based upon a physical optics generalization of the geometrical optics Shack-Hartmann test, in which each S-H lenslet straddles an intersegment edge. For the extremely large segmented telescopes currently in the design stages, one is led naturally to very large pupil demagnifications for the S-H phasing cameras. This in turn implies rather small Fresnel numbers F for the lenslets; the nominal design for the Thirty Meter Telescope calls for F=0.6. For such small Fresnel numbers, it may be possible to eliminate the lenslets entirely, replacing them with a simple mask containing a sparse array of clear subapertures and thereby also eliminating a number of manufacturing problems and experimental complications associated with lenslets. We present laboratory results that demonstrate the validity of this approach.

Improved upper winds models for several astronomical observatories.

An understanding of wind speed and direction as a function of height are critical to the proper modeling of atmospheric turbulence. We have used radiosonde data from launch sites near significant astronomical observatories and created averaged profiles of wind speed and direction and have also computed Richardson number profiles. Using data from the last 30 years, we confirm a 1977 Greenwood wind profile, and extend it to include parameters that show seasonal variations and differences in location. The added information from our models is useful for the design of adaptive optics systems and other imaging systems. Our analysis of the Richardson number suggests that persistent turbulent layers may be inferred when low values are present in our long term averaged data. Knowledge of the presence of these layers may help with planning for adaptive optics and laser communications.

Deep turbulence effects compensation experiments with a cascaded adaptive optics system using a 3.63 m telescope.

Compensation of extended (deep) turbulence effects is one of the most challenging problems in adaptive optics (AO). In the AO approach described, the deep turbulence wave propagation regime was achieved by imaging stars at low elevation angles when image quality improvement with conventional AO was poor. These experiments were conducted at the U.S. Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site (AMOS) by using the 3.63 m telescope located on Haleakala, Maui. To enhance compensation performance we used a cascaded AO system composed of a conventional AO system based on a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror with 941 actuators, and an AO system based on stochastic parallel gradient descent optimization with four deformable mirrors (75 control channels). This first-time field demonstration of a cascaded AO system achieved considerably improved performance of wavefront phase aberration compensation. Image quality was improved in a repeatable way in the presence of stressing atmospheric conditions obtained by using stars at elevation angles as low as 15 degrees.