Computation of misalignment and primary mirror astigmatism figure error of two-mirror telescopes

Abstract. Active optics usually uses the computation models based on numerical methods to correct misalignments and figure errors at present. These methods can hardly lead to any insight into the aberration field dependencies that arise in the presence of the misalignments. An analytical alignment model based on third-order nodal aberration theory is presented for this problem, which can be utilized to compute the primary mirror astigmatic figure error and misalignments for two-mirror telescopes. Alignment simulations are conducted for an R-C telescope based on this analytical alignment model. It is shown that in the absence of wavefront measurement errors, wavefront measurements at only two field points are enough, and the correction process can be completed with only one alignment action. In the presence of wavefront measurement errors, increasing the number of field points for wavefront measurements can enhance the robustness of the alignment model. Monte Carlo simulation shows that, when −2  mm  ≤  linear misalignment  ≤  2  mm, −0.1  deg  ≤  angular misalignment  ≤  0.1  deg, and −0.2 λ  ≤  astigmatism figure error (expressed as fringe Zernike coefficients C5  /  C6, λ  =  632.8  nm) ≤0.2 λ, the misaligned systems can be corrected to be close to nominal state without wavefront testing error. In addition, the root mean square deviation of RMS wavefront error of all the misaligned samples after being corrected is linearly related to wavefront testing error.