Focal-plane-assisted pyramid wavefront sensor: Enabling frame-by-frame optical gain tracking

Aims. With its high sensitivity, the pyramid wavefront sensor (PyWFS) is becoming an advantageous sensor for astronomical adaptive optics (AO) systems. However, this sensor exhibits significant non-linear behaviours leading to challenging AO control issues.Methods. In order to mitigate these effects, we propose to use in addition to the classical pyramid sensor a focal plane image combined with a convolutive description of the sensor to fast track the PyWFS non-linearities, the so-called optical gains (OG).Results. We show that this additional focal plane imaging path only requires a small fraction of the total flux while representing a robust solution to estimating the PyWFS OG. Finally, we demonstrate the gain that our method brings with specific examples of bootstrapping and handling non-common path aberrations.

Automated summary

In this study, a new method for dealing with non-linearities in the pyramid wavefront sensor (PyWFS) using optical gains (OG) is proposed, which combines focal plane imaging with a convolutive description of the sensor. This method shows good robustness and efficiency in estimating the optical gains of PyWFS, offering a solution to challenging adaptive optics control issues.