Off-line and on-line modal optimization of the MMT-AO system

摘要

The MMT adaptive optics system has been in operation for over 2 years. Besides being a technological demonstration, it has achieved remarkable success. However, the system is presently limited by a few factors, one of which is the lack of an optimised controller. In this paper, we review the optimised modal integrator as introduced in Ref5 and evaluate its potential for MMT-AO. We find that it can indeed increase the system sensitivity by one magnitude but that a careful analysis of wave front sensor data must be performed to remove artefacts that can severely bias the outcome of the optimization.