Expand this Topic clickable element to expand a topic
Skip to content
Optica Publishing Group

Photon noise and atmospheric noise in active optical systems

Not Accessible

Your library or personal account may give you access

Abstract

A general theoretical analysis is made of the performance of optical systems that are designed to give diffraction-limited images of astronomical objects by compensating effects of atmospheric seeing in real time. The heart of any such system is a feedback algorithm, which expresses the controlled displacements of mirror surfaces as functions of the output of optical sensors. The statistical behavior of the system is calculated, assuming the feedback algorithm to be linear but otherwise unrestricted. The effect of feedback in diminishing atmospheric noise while amplifying photon noise is worked out in detail, taking into account photon–photon correlations. A figure of merit for system performance, namely a statistical average of a positive quadratic function of phase errors over mirror surfaces, is arbitrarily chosen. By use of this figure of merit, the optimum feedback algorithm for any given optical system is explicitly determined. The optimum algorithm is independent of the quadratic function of phase errors that is chosen as the figure of merit. Applications of the general theory to particular optical systems are briefly discussed. In principle, systems optimized in this way should be able to give images of arbitrarily high resolution of astronomical objects brighter than about magnitude 14.

© 1975 Optical Society of America

Full Article  |  PDF Article
More Like This
Isoplanicity: The translation invariance of the atmospheric Green’s function*

D. Korff, G. Dryden, and R. P. Leavitt
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 65(11) 1321-1330 (1975)

Multimodule optical systems*

R. I. Mercado and O. N. Stavroudis
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 65(10) 1133-1140 (1975)

Cited By

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Equations (111)

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Equations are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Select as filters


Select Topics Cancel
© Copyright 2024 | Optica Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved