Compensation of extended (deep) turbulence effects is one of the most challenging problems in adaptive optics (AO). In the AO approach described, the deep turbulence wave propagation regime was achieved by imaging stars at low elevation angles when image quality improvement with conventional AO was poor. These experiments were conducted at the U.S. Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site (AMOS) by using the 3.63 m telescope located on Haleakala, Maui. To enhance compensation performance we used a cascaded AO system composed of a conventional AO system based on a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror with 941 actuators, and an AO system based on stochastic parallel gradient descent optimization with four deformable mirrors (75 control channels). This first-time field demonstration of a cascaded AO system achieved considerably improved performance of wavefront phase aberration compensation. Image quality was improved in a repeatable way in the presence of stressing atmospheric conditions obtained by using stars at elevation angles as low as 15 degrees.

An analytical expression for the log-amplitude correlation function for plane wave propagation through anisotropic non-Kolmogorov turbulent atmosphere is derived. The closed-form analytic results are based on the Rytov approximation. These results agree well with wave optics simulation based on the more general Fresnel approximation as well as with numerical evaluations, for low-to-moderate strengths of turbulence. The new expression reduces correctly to the previously published analytic expressions for the cases of plane wave propagation through both nonisotropic Kolmogorov turbulence and isotropic non-Kolmogorov turbulence cases. These results are useful for understanding the potential impact of deviations from the standard isotropic Kolmogorov spectrum.

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