End-to-end simulations of photonic phase correctors for adaptive optics systems

Optical beams and starlight distorted by atmospheric turbulence can be corrected with adaptive optics systems to enable efficient coupling into single-mode fibers. Deformable mirrors, used to flatten the wavefront in astronomical telescopes, are costly, sensitive, and complex mechanical components t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2024-07
Main Authors: Patel, Dhwanil, Diab, Momen, Cheriton, Ross, Taylor, Jacob, Rojas, Libertad, Vachon, Martin, Dan-Xia, Xu, Schmid, Jens H, Cheben, Pavel, Janz, Siegfried, Sivanandam, Suresh
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptive optics
Adaptive sampling
Adaptive systems
Astronomy
Atmospheric correction
Atmospheric turbulence
Deformable mirrors
Deformation
Formability
Free space optics
Free-space optical communication
Mechanical components
Optical receivers
Photon beams
Photonics
Telescopes
Wave fronts
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Summary:Optical beams and starlight distorted by atmospheric turbulence can be corrected with adaptive optics systems to enable efficient coupling into single-mode fibers. Deformable mirrors, used to flatten the wavefront in astronomical telescopes, are costly, sensitive, and complex mechanical components that require careful calibration to enable high-quality imaging in astronomy, microscopy, and vision science. They are also impractical to deploy in large numbers for non-imaging applications like free-space optical communication. Here, we propose a photonic integrated c rcuit capable of spatially sampling the wavefront collected by the telescope and co-phasing the subapertures to maximize the flux delivered to an output single-mode fiber as the integrated photonic implementation of a deformable mirror. We present the results of end-to-end simulations to quantify the performance of the proposed photonic solution under varying atmospheric conditions toward realizing an adaptive optics system without a deformable mirror for free-space optical receivers.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2407.11171