Design of Continuous Superresolving Masks for Ground‐based Telescopes

A number of astronomical applications require resolutions that are moderately beyond the diffraction limit of current telescopes. Fortunately, these telescopes can yield the desired performance through the use of superresolution techniques. In terms of Strehl ratios, the most advantageous superresolution techniques are based on pupil phase masks. Most of these phase masks are composed of discontinuous annuli. However, a continuous design is more useful in a ground-based telescope, because it can be implemented using the deformable mirror of the adaptive optics system. We present a method for obtaining a continuous profile with a desired performance from an annular mask with the same performance. This method for designing continuous masks allows ground-based astronomy to benefit from the great body of information, analysis techniques, etc., developed for annular designs. Finally, we check our designing method using simulated data, and we analyze the resolution improvement and the adaptive optics system requirements.