Bench-level Laser Guide Star Source and Atmospheric Turbulence Simulator

HartSCI will deliver a test facility for laser-guided adaptive optics instruments that supports multiple simulated sodium and Rayleigh laser guide stars (LGS) as well as natural guide star (NGS) analogs, all in a configurable arrangement to allow exploration of arbitrary constellations of beacons of any of these types. The facility will also include a 3D analog of atmospheric turbulence with aberration distributed along the line of sight to model focus and angular anisoplanatism, and configurable turbulence and wind profiles. In the Phase II program we propose to build the simulator according to the design completed in Phase I and deploy it to the Atmospheric Simulation and Adaptive optics Laboratory Testbed (ASALT) at the Starfire Optical Range (SOR). The simulator supports a multi-layer atmospheric turbulence model with variable Fried length and coherence time, as well as constellations of Rayleigh, sodium, and natural guide stars with sources in variable numbers, range, and field position as well as other characteristics. The system will serve as an operational tool in its own right, supporting the needs of AFRL in the development of advanced instrumentation and techniques in AO for SDA missions. It will also serve as a prototype for additional simulation systems that HartSCI envisions will be delivered both to military customers for SDA and long-range laser communication applications, and to astronomical observatories planning AO instrumentation for existing and future large ground-based telescopes.