Exascale integrated modeling of low-order wavefront sensing and control for the Roman Coronagraph instrument.

Astronomical instruments to detect exoplanets require extreme wavefront stability. For these missions to succeed, comprehensive and precise modeling is required to design and analyze suitable coronagraphs and their wavefront control systems. In this paper, we describe techniques for integrated modeling at scale that is, to the best of our knowledge, 1000 times faster than previously published works. We show how this capability has been used to validate performance and perform uncertainty quantification for the Roman Coronagraph instrument. Finally, we show how this modeling capacity may be necessary to design and build the next generation of space-based coronagraph instruments.

Estimation of normalized point-source sensitivity of segment surface specifications for extremely large telescopes.

We present a method which estimates the normalized point-source sensitivity (PSSN) of a segmented telescope when only information from a single segment surface is known. The estimation principle is based on a statistical approach with an assumption that all segment surfaces have the same power spectral density (PSD) as the given segment surface. As presented in this paper, the PSSN based on this statistical approach represents a worst-case scenario among statistical random realizations of telescopes when all segment surfaces have the same PSD. Therefore, this method, which we call the vendor table, is expected to be useful for individual segment specification such as the segment polishing specification. The specification based on the vendor table can be directly related to a science metric such as PSSN and provides the mirror vendors significant flexibility by specifying a single overall PSSN value for them to meet. We build a vendor table for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and test it using multiple mirror samples from various mirror vendors to prove its practical utility. Accordingly, TMT has a plan to adopt this vendor table for its M1 segment final mirror polishing requirement.

Approximation of normalized point source sensitivity using power spectral density and slopes of wavefront aberration.

We have investigated two approximation methods for estimating the normalized point source sensitivity (PSSN), which is a recently developed optical performance metric for telescopes. One is an approximation based on the power spectral density (PSD) of the wavefront error. The other is the root-square-sum of the wavefront slope. We call these approximations ß approximation and SlopeRMS approximation, respectively. Our analysis shows that for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), the uncertainty of the ß approximation is less than 1×10(-3) if the PSSN is better than 0.95, assuming the input PSD estimation is accurate. In addition, we find that the SlopeRMS approximation is a simple method for estimating the worst-case PSSN value in the specific situation when the PSSN is dominated by low-frequency aberrations. Therefore, the SlopeRMS approximation is expected to be useful for specifying a mirror surface for mirror vendors. Accordingly, TMT has a plan to adopt the SlopeRMS approximation for its M2 and M3 polishing specification.

Analysis of normalized point source sensitivity as a performance metric for large telescopes.

We investigate a new metric, the normalized point source sensitivity (PSSN), for characterizing the seeing-limited performance of large telescopes. As the PSSN metric is directly related to the photometric error of background limited observations, it represents the efficiency loss in telescope observing time. The PSSN metric properly accounts for the optical consequences of wave front spatial frequency distributions due to different error sources, which differentiates from traditional metrics such as the 80% encircled energy diameter and the central intensity ratio. We analytically show that multiplication of individual PSSN values due to individual errors is a good approximation for the total PSSN when various errors are considered simultaneously. We also numerically confirm this feature for Zernike aberrations as well as for the numerous error sources considered in the error budget of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) using a ray optics simulator. Additionally, we discuss other pertinent features of the PSSN, including its relations to Zernike aberration, RMS wave front error, and central intensity ratio.