ACHIEVING DIFFRACTION-LIMITED ANGULAR RESOLUTIONS in the OPTICAL THROUGH SPECKLE STABILIZATION by MARK STANLEY KEREMEDJIEV A
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ACHIEVING DIFFRACTION-LIMITED ANGULAR RESOLUTIONS IN THE OPTICAL THROUGH SPECKLE STABILIZATION By MARK STANLEY KEREMEDJIEV A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2011 °c 2011 Mark Stanley Keremedjiev 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the process of doing the research and writing this dissertation, I have had a lot of help along the way. My research would not have gotten very far without the aid of my advisor, Stephen Eikenberry. On day one he handed me a great project idea that I am fortunate to have worked on. His advice, guidance and excitement for the field have been an inspiration. Anthony Gonzalez deserves quite a bit of recognition for all of the help he has given me. His expertise in extragalactic matters enabled me to pursue research interests more attuned to my particular tastes. Beyond that, his insights into academia and comments on various proposals and papers throughout the years have been extremely helpful. The instrumentation-side of things would not have gotten very far without the guidance of Nick Raines. He has been indispensable in offering advice, ideas and plain old fashion common sense when putting my instrument together. Without him and the other engineering folks on the fourth floor, my project would have likely taken years longer to finish. Reba Bandyopadhyay is someone I would like to thank for long discussions on the mechanics of actually being a scientist. In addition to that, she has also provided valuable editing advices and research project ideas. I would like to thank the staff at the Kitt Peak National Observatory and the William Herschel Telescope. Installing a new instrument can always be tricky and both facilities were more than helpful when problems arose. I would particularly like to thank Dick Joyce, Di Harmer and Ian Skillen for their assistance. In addition, Bruno Femenia deserves credit for helping me with EMCCD issues. Joe Carson’s fundamental question: “how does SPIFS compare to Lucky for imaging?” was essential to the results found in Chapter 7. He was also a great observing partner for the first week-long SPIFS-POC run at the KPNO 2.1-meter. On the software end of things, I would like to thank Craig Warner for allowing me to use his prototype FATBOY data analysis software. Eric Ford deserves credit for his insightful comments on GPUs and endless patience helping me learn to program CUDA. Related to that, Nathan De 3 Lee’s comments on C++ programming in general helped get the SPIFS-POC running. I thank Jian Ge for allowing me the use of his optical bench when the SPIFS-POC was in its infancy. The office staff in our department have been extremely supportive and helpful during my tenure and kept me from spending a huge amount of time buried under paperwork. I also thank Brandi Boniface for helping with the international shipping of SPIFS. The department’s computer coordinator, Ken Sallot, has been an asset and I owe him particular thanks for getting a construction crew to leave early so as not to make noise during my defense. My office-mattes Ji Wang and Soung-Chul Yang have been good friends throughout graduate school and our weekly lunches have been a good break from the routine of staring at a screen day in and day out. Justin Crepp and Dimitri Veras were both helpful in advising how to navigate the ins and outs of graduate school and in particular, Justin’s advice to write up everything as you go along saved a tremendous amount of time when I sat down to write this dissertation. I also thank my friend Doug Bishop for our long conversations and providing a useful, outside insight on many matters. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the SPIFS-POC “corporate sponsor” the Gregory Marshall Blond Salon. The hairspray they provided has been extremely helpful in characterizing system performance and probably saved me a bit of a headache in justifying the purchase of beauty products with a federal grant... I think it is also important to mention two individuals who really got me excited about professional science. The first is Ives Idzerda at Montana State University. When I was thinking about leaving the field, he put me to work as an REU in his lab and showed me that experimental science is truly amazing. The second person is Jim Houck at Cornell University. Conversations with him made showed me what real science is and how it should be done. My family deserves special recognition for supporting me the whole way through. My parents, George and Barbara, have endorsed my efforts from day one and were always there to listen. My sister, Helen, has also been a friend in this whole process as we both have tried to get through the experience known as “graduate school”. 4 But I especially thank my wife, Lauren, for being both a sounding board and grounding rod for my thoughts. Our countless hours talking about the mechanics of graduate school, my research and life in general has kept me sane (you always know how to make me laugh). Thank you all! The research in this dissertation was partially supported by NSF grant AST-0917758. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................... 3 LIST OF TABLES ....................................... 9 LIST OF FIGURES ....................................... 10 ABSTRACT ........................................... 13 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................... 14 1.1 Current Speckle-Based Systems .......................... 14 1.2 Speckle Stabilization ................................ 18 1.3 Using Speckle Stabilization to Probe the Masses of SMBH ............ 21 2 SIMULATIONS OF SPECKLE STABILIZATION ................... 24 2.1 Simulation Design ................................. 24 2.2 Simulation Results ................................. 26 2.2.1 Core FWHM ................................ 26 2.2.2 Strehl Ratios ................................ 27 2.2.3 Guide Star Magnitudes ........................... 28 2.2.4 Off-axis Guiding .............................. 30 2.3 Simulations of SS 433 ............................... 33 3 DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF THE SPIFS-POC .......... 37 3.1 Principal Components and Performance ...................... 37 3.1.1 Speckle sensor ............................... 37 3.1.1.1 Timing .............................. 38 3.1.1.2 Read noise ............................ 38 3.1.2 Fast steering mirror ............................. 41 3.1.3 Science detector ............................... 46 3.2 Optical Design ................................... 46 3.3 Mechanical Design ................................. 49 3.4 Turbulence Generator ................................ 55 4 CONTROL LOOP .................................... 57 4.1 Overall Loop Design ................................ 57 4.2 Speckle Selection Algorithm ............................ 58 4.3 Loop Speed and Optimization ........................... 65 4.3.1 2D Cross Correlations ........................... 65 4.3.2 Using a GPU to Speed Up Convolution Calculations ........... 66 4.3.2.1 Method and results ........................ 66 6 4.3.2.2 Discussion ............................ 67 4.4 Driver Initialization ................................. 69 4.5 Windowing ..................................... 70 4.6 Detector Rotation and Solution ........................... 72 4.7 Final Loop Speed and Code Options ........................ 73 4.8 Initial Lab Results .................................. 74 5 OBSERVATIONS WITH THE SPIFS-POC ....................... 77 5.1 2009A/B Observations at the KPNO 2.1-m .................... 77 5.2 2010A Observations at the WHT .......................... 79 5.2.1 Single Star Observations .......................... 80 5.2.2 Observations of WDS 14411+1344 ..................... 83 5.3 System Accuracy .................................. 85 6 FUTURE PLANS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE S3D ................ 87 6.1 Loop Speed and Latency .............................. 87 6.2 FSM Accuracy ................................... 88 6.3 High Speed Shutter ................................. 90 6.4 Science Channel and ADC ............................. 90 6.5 S3D ......................................... 92 7 A COMPARISON BETWEEN LUCKY IMAGING AND SPECKLE STABILIZATION FOR ASTRONOMICAL IMAGING ........................... 94 7.1 Methods ....................................... 94 7.1.1 Speckle Stabilization Simulations ..................... 94 7.1.2 Comparison Between Methods ....................... 96 7.2 Results ....................................... 99 7.2.1 Read Noise Limit .............................. 102 7.2.2 Photon Counting .............................. 103 7.2.3 Optimal Lucky Imaging .......................... 106 7.2.4 1024x1024 pixel2 Detectors ........................ 108 7.3 Discussion ...................................... 110 8 THE FUTURE OF SMBH DETECTION VIA KINEMATIC MODELING AS ENABLED BY ELTS ......................................... 111 8.1 Extremely-Large Telescopes ............................ 111 8.1.1 Theoretical Improvements Over Existing Facilities ............ 112 8.1.1.1 10-meter resolutions ....................... 112 8.1.1.2 ELT diffraction-limited resolutions ............... 113 8.1.2 K-band CO Bandheads ........................... 114 8.1.3 H-band CO Bandheads ........................... 117 8.1.4 Calcium Triplet Lines ............................ 118 8.1.5 Number of Galaxies ............................. 120 7 8.1.6 First-Generation Instruments on ELTs ................... 122 8.2