Development of Advanced Instruments for Adaptive Optics Cameras, Spectrographs, Coronagraphs, Tomographic Cameras and Ophthalmoscopes for AO

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Development of Advanced Instruments for Adaptive
OpticsCameras, Spectrographs, Coronagraphs,
Tomographic Cameras and Ophthalmoscopes for AO

• Associate Director - James Larkin

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Motivations

• AO presents new capabilities and challenges for
  scientific instruments
• High spatial resolution requires fine sampling
• Small physical size of instrument components
• Small corrected field of view
• Need excellent optical quality
• Only a few simple custom AO instruments have been
  developed
• Many of the technologies are common between AO
  and AO instruments (lenslets, MEMs, low noise
  detectors)
• AO and instruments require a close coupling

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What is CfAO Doing for AO Instrumentation

• Sponsor design studies for new concepts and
  technologies
• Train graduate and undergraduate students
• in instrumentation
• Develop new technologies with industrial
• partners
• Organize AO instrumentation workshops
• Will also improve general purpose instruments
• Develop reduction and analysis software and
  simulations
• Assist with instrument proposals and design
  reviews at major observatories

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Optimizing AO with Applications to OCTImaging of
the Human Retina

• P.I. Donald Miller (Indiana Univ.)
• Develop Optical Coherence Tomographic Camera
• Current Status
• Optimizing wavefront corrector design for human
  eye
• Designing OCT camera

• Select Future Goals
• Construct 37 channel DM with optimized wavefront
  correction.
• Integrate AO system and OCT camera.
• Design optimized system for clinical population.

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Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope

• P.I. Austin Roorda (Univ. of Houston)
• Built optical testbed for AO system
• Build a scanning laser ophthalmoscope
• Current Status
• Ordering components for SLO

• Select Future Goals
• Test 37 channel DM.
• Combine AO system and SLO.
• Develop software for acquiring and rendering 3-D
  retinal images.
• Test and develop 2nd generation AO-SLO

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Integral Field Spectrograph

• P.I. James Larkin (UCLA)
• Design spectrograph for Keck AO system
• Work on software for Reducing 3-d data

• Built Optical Testbed
• Submitted proposal to CARA and NSF for
  instrument funding
• Working on analysis package for Keck AO data
  KCAM NIRC2
• In year 2, will investigate the use of fiber
  optic bundles for IFS.

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IRCAL Infrared AO Camera

• P.I. James Graham (U.C.Berkeley)
• Facility Class IR camera optimized for the Lick
  3m AO system.
• Center activities concentrate on improving camera
  and investigating new technologies and
  capabilities.

• Camera is also one of the main facilities
  available to center scientists.
• New Technologies
• Silicon grisms for spectroscopy
• Coronagraphic masks for high contrast imaging.

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Center Aspects

• The three main groups of opthalmologists have
  coordinated their instrument developments in
  order to avoid direct overlap and to cover
  several instrument concepts.
• The two astronomy instruments groups collaborate
  on integral field spectrograph.
• Six graduates students are being trained in
  state-of-the-art instrumentation.
• Center funding helped build a full scale test bed
  for the integral field spectrograph. This was
  crucial in gaining experience that led to a
  winning proposal for instrument funding.
• Many of the astronomical science programs use
  IRCAL as their main instrument.
• The silicon grisms in IRCAL have come out of a
  collaboration between Livermore and U.C. Berkeley
  center members.
• A UCLA astronomy graduate student has visited the
  Rochester Lab.

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Future Instrument Developments

• Instruments and AO systems need to work together
  actively
• Phase diversity move elements within
  instrument in out of focus
• Integrated infrared tip-tilt sensors for
  maximum IR sensitivity (connected to goal 4)
• Optimize PSF shape to fit aperture and observing
  mode (connected to goal 2)

Rockwell 2048x2048 Infrared Array

• Advanced Detectors
• AO on 8-10 m telescopes needs very small pixels
  to sample diffraction limit requires more
  pixels and larger detectors.
• As AO pushes into the visible, instruments will
  need larger wavelength range - 0.5 to 5 micron
  HgCdTe (connected to goal 4).
• Partner with Rockwell Science Center to evaluate
  new infrared arrays (connected to goals 2 and 4).

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Vision for the Future

• In next four years
• Integral field spectrographs will be taking
  spectra routinely at better than 0.1 resolution
• High resolution spectrographs will be much more
  compact
• IR spectrographs will be cheaper and have higher
  resolution
• AO Coronagraphs will observe faint objects very
  close to bright stars
• Protoplanetary disks
• Brown Dwarfs
• Vision instruments will be able to probe
  3-dimensional structures of photoreceptors at the
  diffraction limit of the eye.
• Vision instruments will be optimized for the
  degrees of freedom of the eye so they will be
  cost effective and compact.

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Vision for the Future

• In ten years
• Instruments for astronomical AO will be as varied
  and capable as instruments for ordinary
  telescopes today.
• AO vision instruments will be mature enough to
  make them common tools for clinical researchers.