Analysis of adaptive optics control for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope

Large aperture solar telescopes, such as the 4 meter aperture Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST), depend on high order adaptive optics (AO) to achieve the telescope's diffraction limited resolution. The AO system not only corrects incoming distortions introduced by atmospheric turbulence, its performance also plays a critical role for the operation of other subsystems and affects the results obtained by downstream scientific instrumentation. For this reason, robust and optimal operation of the AO system is vital to maximize the scientific output of ATST. In order to optimize performance, we evaluate different strategies to obtain the control matrix of the AO system. The dependency of AO performance on various control parameters, such as different system calibration and reconstruction schemes, is analyzed using an AO simulation tool. The AO simulation tool provides a realistic solar AO system simulation and allows a detailed evaluation of the performance achieved by different calibration and reconstruction methods. The results of this study will guide the optimization of the AO system during design and operations.