Tolerancing the PIAA-ZWFS: a practical and robust wavefront sensor that approaches the fundamental sensitivity limit

arXiv (Cornell University)

Abstract

High-contrast imaging demands extremely sensitive wavefront sensing to correct atmospheric effects and surface errors. While the limits of the sensitivity of a wavefront sensor are well known, a practical, robust design that saturates these limits remains elusive. This work further investigates the PIAA-ZWFS (Phase-Induced Amplitude Apodization-Zernike Wavefront Sensor). In previous work, we developed a framework to optimise its design, maximising Fisher information per frame in the presence of phase aberrations. In these proceedings, we study the effect of various manufacturing and alignment errors in the system on the overall performance. We employ both traditional Monte Carlo sampling and a 2nd order expansion using our auto-differentiable simulator. The performance of the PIAA-ZWFS is not significantly degraded by these errors at values typical for manufacturing.

Authors 3

1. Adam K. Taras Aachen Leiden Observatory

   Leiden University · Leiden Observatory

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden Observatory , Leiden University , PO Box 9513 , 2300 RA Leiden , The Netherlands

2. Sebastiaan Y. Haffert Aachen Leiden Observatory

   Leiden University · Leiden Observatory

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden Observatory , Leiden University , PO Box 9513 , 2300 RA Leiden , The Netherlands

3. Louis C. Desdoigts Aachen Leiden Observatory

   Leiden University · Leiden Observatory

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden Observatory , Leiden University , PO Box 9513 , 2300 RA Leiden , The Netherlands