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HWO Pupil Chopping Wavefront Sensing and Control FY24 Mini-Project Writeup

Gerard, Benjamin L.·Laguna, Cesar·Lemmer, Aaron
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Abstract

This document is a summary of work completed in June through July 2024 to assess the feasibility of implementing non-coronagraphic pupil chopping (PC) for Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) primary mirror segment stabilization with an on- and/or off-axis Natural Guide Star (NGS) or Laser Guide Star (LGS). This work considers three different PC configurations: (1) a non-common path (NCP) continuous low-order Deformable Mirror (DM), (2) using the telescope’s primary mirror (M1) segment(s), and (3) using a NCP low-order segmented DM. We show that option 2 likely needs a LGS for guiding, while options 1 and 3 may be able to guide on NGSs. We also separately evaluate spectral bandwidth limitations in the absence of photon noise, showing that the technique is limited to Δλ/λ ≲ 25% in a standard imaging configuration but Δλ/λ ≲ 150% when using a NCP Wynne corrector.

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Gerard, Benjamin L., Laguna, Cesar, Lemmer, Aaron. 2024-07-19. HWO Pupil Chopping Wavefront Sensing and Control FY24 Mini-Project Writeup. https://doi.org/10.2172/2407216

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