Real-time liquid-crystal atmosphere turbulence simulator with graphic processing unit.

To generate time-evolving atmosphere turbulence in real time, a phase-generating method for our liquid-crystal (LC) atmosphere turbulence simulator (ATS) is derived based on the Fourier series (FS) method. A real matrix expression for generating turbulence phases is given and calculated with a graphic processing unit (GPU), the GeForce 8800 Ultra. A liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) with 256x256 pixels is used as the turbulence simulator. The total time to generate a turbulence phase is about 7.8 ms for calculation and readout with the GPU. A parallel processing method of calculating and sending a picture to the LCOS is used to improve the simulating speed of our LC ATS. Therefore, the real-time turbulence phase-generation frequency of our LC ATS is up to 128 Hz. To our knowledge, it is the highest speed used to generate a turbulence phase in real time.

[1]  Robert K. Tyson,et al.  Measurement of the optical path difference over an atmospheric turbulence phase plate , 2004, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[2]  D. Gregory,et al.  Laboratory simulation of atmospheric turbulence-induced optical wavefront distortion , 2002 .

[3]  D. Buscher,et al.  Dual-conjugate wavefront generation for adaptive optics. , 2000, Optics express.

[4]  R. Frehlich,et al.  Simulation of laser propagation in a turbulent atmosphere. , 2000, Applied optics.

[5]  Matthew E. Goda,et al.  Aberration production using a high-resolution liquid-crystal spatial light modulator , 2006, SPIE Optics + Photonics.

[6]  Impact of telescope seeing on laser adaptive optics. , 2006, Optics letters.

[7]  Ray M. Sharples,et al.  Dual-conjugate wavefront generation with liquid crystal spatial light modulators , 1999, Other Conferences.

[8]  Colin Bradley,et al.  Hot-air optical turbulence generator for the testing of adaptive optics systems: principles and characterization. , 2006, Applied optics.

[9]  Li Xuan,et al.  A liquid crystal atmospheric turbulence simulator. , 2006, Optics express.

[10]  David Le Mignant,et al.  Performance of the Keck Observatory adaptive-optics system. , 2004, Applied optics.

[11]  Eric Gendron,et al.  Method for simulating infinitely long and non stationary phase screens with optimized memory storage. , 2006, Optics express.

[12]  Rüdiger Westermann,et al.  A fast and high-quality cone beam reconstruction pipeline using the GPU , 2007, SPIE Medical Imaging.

[13]  Byron M. Welsh,et al.  Fourier-series-based atmospheric phase screen generator for simulating anisoplanatic geometries and temporal evolution , 1997, Optics & Photonics.

[14]  Travis S. Taylor,et al.  Optical processing through turbulent media , 1996, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[15]  David Le Mignant,et al.  Atmospheric turbulence characterization with the Keck adaptive optics systems. I. Open-loop data. , 2003, Applied optics.

[16]  David Charles Dayton,et al.  Multisegment spatial light modulators for the simulation of Kolmogorov turbulence , 1998, Optics & Photonics.

[17]  Matthew E. Goda,et al.  Atmospheric simulation using a liquid crystal wavefront-controlling device , 2004, SPIE Optics + Photonics.

[18]  Jeffrey J. Widiker,et al.  Open-loop simulations of atmospheric turbulence using the AdAPS interface , 2005, SPIE Optics + Photonics.

[19]  Matthias Schock,et al.  Atmospheric turbulence analysis with the Keck adaptive optics systems , 2003, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[20]  T. Aruga,et al.  Recovery of blurred images obtained through turbulent media. , 2003, Applied optics.

[21]  Matthew E. Goda,et al.  Atmospheric turbulence simulation using liquid crystal spatial light modulators , 2012, SPIE Optics + Photonics.

[22]  Jaroslaw Lipowski.  Real-time data processing on graphics processors , 2006, Symposium on Photonics Applications in Astronomy, Communications, Industry, and High-Energy Physics Experiments (WILGA).

[23]  Bernhard Delabre,et al.  MAPS: a turbulence simulator for MCAO , 2004, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[24]  Wenli Xu,et al.  Broadband, static wave-front generation: Na-Ag ion-exchange phase screens and telescope emulation. , 2004, Applied optics.

[25]  Stefan Hippler,et al.  Atmosphere-like turbulence generation with surface-etched phase-screens. , 2006, Optics express.

[26]  Q. Mu,et al.  Phase-only liquid crystal spatial light modulator for wavefront correction with high precision. , 2004, Optics express.

[27]  Q. Mu,et al.  Open-loop correction of horizontal turbulence: system design and result. , 2008, Applied optics.