Mean-square residual error of a wavefront after propagation through atmospheric turbulence and after correction with Zernike polynomials.

ABSTRACT

The root-mean-square (rms) of the residual wavefront, after propagation through atmospheric turbulence and corrected from Zernike polynomials, has been derived for the von Kármán turbulence model. The rms for any location in the telescope pupil and the pupil average rms have been calculated. It is shown that the residual rms on the edge of the pupil can be up to 35% larger than the pupil average residual rms. The results are useful to estimate the required rms stroke of deformable mirror (DM) actuators when they are used as a second stage of correction either in a tip-tilt, single-DM configuration or in a tip-tilt, two-DM (woofer-tweeter) setup.