High-speed SPGD wavefront controller for an adaptive optics system without wavefront sensor

Abstract

A non-conventional adaptive optics system based on direct system performance metric optimization is illustrated. The system does not require wave-front sensor which is difficult to work under the poor condition such as beam cleanup for the anomalous light beam. The system comprises a high speed wavefront controller based on Stochastic Parallel Gradient Descent (SPGD) Algorithm, a deformable mirror, a tip/tilt mirror and a far-field system performance metric sensor. The architecture of the wave-front controller is based on a combination of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and floating-point Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The Zernike coefficient information is applied to improve the iteration speed. The experimental results show that the beam cleanup system based on SPGD keep a high iteration speed. The controller can compensate the wavefront aberration and tilt excursion effectively.