Date of Award

12-1993

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Engineering Physics

First Advisor

Michael C. Roggemann, PhD

Abstract

Large-aperture telescopes require adaptive optics in order to compensate for atmospheric turbulence which would otherwise negate the resolution advantages of using large apertures. This investigation analyzes the impacts of misalignments and failures, in the deformable mirror actuators, upon the performance of such systems. A numerical simulation of a standard adaptive optics system is used to generate characteristic optical transfer function OTF and signal-to-noise ratio SNR performance metrics. The performance impacts of the misalignments are shown to be dependent upon the Fried parameter effective telescope diameter, the source object brightness, and the control system time delay. The degree of performance degradation is directly related to the relative value of the Fried parameter to the deformable mirror displacement misalignment cases and the effective actuator spacing actuator failure cases. The results indicate that the impact of misalignments and failures is small when seeing conditions are good or the percentage misalignments and failures are small.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GSO-ENP-93D-01

DTIC Accession Number

ADA273838

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

Download

Share

COinS