Fast Hardware Implementation of Tomography for Multi-guidestar Adaptive Optics

摘要

An adaptive optics system using multiple deformable mirrors and an array of guidestars can correct over a wider field of view than traditional single DM systems and can also eliminate the cone-effect error due to the finite altitude of laser guidestars. In large telescope systems, such as the envisioned 30-meter telescope, or TMT, the extraordinarily large amount of computation needed to implement multi-conjugate adaptive optics at atmospheric turnover rates is prohibitive for ordinary CPUs, even when another ten years of computer development is taken into account. We present here a novel approach, implementing a fast iterative version of the key inverse tomography calculations in an array of parallel computing elements. Our initial laboratory experiments using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are promising in terms of speed and convergence rates. In this paper we present the theory and results from simulations and experiments.