The end-to-end performance achieved by an adaptive optical (AO) imaging system is determined by a combination of the residual time-varying phase distortions associated with atmospheric turbulence and the quasi-static unsensed and uncorrectable aberrations in the optical system itself. Although the effects of these two errors on the time-averaged Strehl ratio and the time-averaged optical transfer function (OTF) of the AO system are not formally separable, such an approximation is found to be accurate to within a few percent for a range of representative residual wave-front errors. In these calculations, we combined static optical system aberrations and time-varying residual phase distortion characteristics of a deformable mirror fitting error, wave-front sensor noise, and anisoplanatism. The static aberrations consist of focus errors of varying magnitudes as well as a combination of unsensed and uncorrectable mirror figure errors derived from modeling by the Gemini 8-Meter Telescopes Project. The overall Strehl ratios and OTF’s that are due to the combined effect of these error sources are well approximated as products of separate factors for the static and time-varying aberrations, as long as the overall Strehl ratio that is due to both errors is greater than approximately 0.1. For lower Strehl ratios, the products provide lower bounds on the actual values of the Strehl ratio and the OTF. The speckle transfer function is also well approximated by a product of two functions, but only where AO compensation is sufficiently good that speckle imaging techniques are usually not required.

© 1999 Optical Society of America

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

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

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

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

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

Related Journal Articles

• Calibration of a Deformable Mirror and Strehl Ratio Measurements by Use of Phase Diversity (AO)
• Theory of branch-point detection and its implementation (JOSAA)
• Myopic deconvolution of adaptive optics images by use of object and point-spread function power spectra (AO)
• Myopic Deconvolution of Adaptive Optics Images by Use of Object and Point-Spread Function Power Spectra: Reply to Comment (AO)
• MISTRAL: a myopic edge-preserving image restoration method, with application to astronomical adaptive-optics-corrected long-exposure images (JOSAA)

Related Conference Papers

• Development of Multi-Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics Techniques for Extremely Large Telescopes
• Simulation of SCAO and MOAO for an Extremely Large Telescope
• Innovative optics for giant telescopes
• Astronomical science with adaptive optics
• Virtual wavefront sensor concept for future giant telescopes: Laboratory experimental results