AN NSF-FUNDED CENTER Center for Adaptive Optics Director: Jerry Nelson Managing Director: Chris Le Maistre Annual Report Associate Directors: August 1, 2002 Andrea Ghez Claire Max Scot Olivier Andreas Quirrenbach Program Year 3 Austin Roorda David Williams Reporting from November 1 2001 to October 31 2002 Phone: 831-459-5592 Fax: 831-459-5717 email: [email protected] Institutions: University of California Santa Cruz University of California Berkeley California Institute of Technology University of Chicago University of Houston Indiana University University of California Irvine University of California Los Angeles University of Rochester University of California San Diego Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Adaptive Optics have enabled the first images showing color receptors in the human eye. In these images, two people with “normal” color vision are shown to have dramatically different distributions of the three color sensors 1 Table of Contents 1. General Information ....................................................................................................................6 1.1. Institutional Data ..................................................................................................................6 1.2 Executive Summary ..............................................................................................................9 1.2.1 CfAO Mission, Goals and Strategies .............................................................................9 1.2.2 Themes ...........................................................................................................................9 1.2.3 Research Management .................................................................................................10 1.2.4 Partnerships ..................................................................................................................11 1.2.5 Highlights for Year 3....................................................................................................11 1.2.6 Closing remarks............................................................................................................13 2. Research ....................................................................................................................................14 Center’s Overall Research Objectives...................................................................................14 Performance and Management Indicators.............................................................................14 Problems................................................................................................................................14 2.1 Theme 1: Education and Human Resources: ......................................................................15 2.2 Theme 2: Adaptive Optics for Extremely Large Telescopes ..............................................15 2.2.1 Goals of Theme 2 and Role of the CfAO.....................................................................15 2.2.2 Activities During Year 3: Outcomes, Accomplishments, and Impacts........................16 2.2.2.1 Design of Multi-Conjugate AO Systems for 30-m Telescopes.............................16 2.2.2.1.1 What is Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics? ...................................................16 2.2.2.1.2 Design of MCAO Systems.............................................................................18 2.2.2.1.3 MCAO control systems and wavefront reconstruction ..................................19 2.2.2.1.4 New modeling tools........................................................................................19 2.2.2.1.5 Dealing with laser guide star spot elongation for ELT’s................................20 2.2.2.1.6 Key hardware components .............................................................................22 2.2.2.2 Developing and testing lasers for use as sodium-layer LGS.................................22 2.2.2.2.1 Pulsed solid-state sum-frequency laser for sodium-layer LGS......................23 2.2.2.2.2 New fiber laser for sodium-layer LGS...........................................................24 2.2.2.3 Developing techniques for doing quantitative astronomy with LGS....................26 2.2.2.3.1 Quantitative characterization of anisoplanatism and its effects on the PSF...27 2.2.2.3.2 Real-time PSF reconstruction for Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors.........28 2.2.2.3.3 Deconvolution of astronomical images..........................................................28 2.2.2.3.4 Measurements of atmospheric turbulence parameters ..................................30 2.2.2.3.5 Measurements of anisoplanatism using short exposures................................30 2.2.2.4 Astronomical science related to laser guide star AO on 30-m telescopes............31 2.2.2.4.1 Adaptive optics studies of the Galactic Center .............................................32 2.2.2.4.2 Adaptive optics studies of faint high-redshift galaxies .................................33 2.2.2.4.3 Nearby Active Galactic Nuclei.......................................................................35 2.2.2.4.4 AO Imaging of Solar System Bodies .............................................................36 2.2.3 Plans for the next reporting period...............................................................................37 2.3 Theme 3: Extreme Adaptive Optics (ExAO): Enabling Ultra-High Contrast Astronomical Observations..............................................................................................................................39 2.3.1 Goals of Theme 3 and Role of CfAO...........................................................................39 2.3.2 System design and analysis. .........................................................................................41 2.3.3 Instrumentation design and analysis.............................................................................42 2 2.3.4 High-contrast astronomical observations. ....................................................................43 2.3.5 Current AO system performance optimization. ...........................................................44 2.3.6 High-order MEMS development..................................................................................45 2.3.7 High-resolution wavefront control algorithm development.........................................46 2.4 Theme 4 – Compact Vision Science Instrumentation for Clinical and Scientific Use .......48 2.4.1 Goals of Theme 4 and Role of CfAO...........................................................................48 2.4.2 Angular Tuning of Single Cones..................................................................................48 2.4.3 The Role of Higher Order Aberrations in Accommodation.........................................48 2.4.4 The Topography of the Cone Mosaic in Humans with Known Photopigment Gene Arrays. ...................................................................................................................................49 2.4.5 Image Processing for High Resolution Retinal Imaging..............................................49 2.4.6 The Effectiveness of Different Aberrations on Subjective Blur ..................................50 2.4.7 Clinical Applications of High Resolution Retinal Imaging with Adaptive Optics .....50 2.4.8 Progress on Vision Science Instrumentation................................................................51 2.4.9 First Results with University of Houston’s Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope....................................................................................................................52 2.4.10 Indiana University’s Progress on the Coherence-Gated Retinal Camera..................53 2.4.11 LLNL Adaptive Optics Phoropter.............................................................................53 2.4.12 Optimization of AO systems for Vision Science. .....................................................54 2.4.13 Progress on Low Cost Wave Front Correctors for Vision Science...........................54 2.4.14 Summary of Year 4 Research....................................................................................55 3. Education...................................................................................................................................57 3.1 Educational Objectives........................................................................................................57 3.2 Performance and Management Indicators...........................................................................57 3.3 Problems Encountered Reaching Education Goals.............................................................58 3.4 The Center's Internal Educational Activities.......................................................................59 3.4.1 Annual Professional Development Conference ...........................................................59 3.4.2 Mini-Grant Project .......................................................................................................61 3.4.3 Third Annual Summer School on Adaptive Optics......................................................62 3.5 The Center's External Educational Activities......................................................................62 3.5.1 Stars, Sight, and Science Summer Course ...................................................................62 3.5.2 Four Year and Community College Internships...........................................................64 3.5.3 ALU