Absolute Tilt from a Laser Guide Star: A First Experiment

Absolute tip–tilt recovery using a tilt signal measured on a Laser Guide Star is a central problem in the framework of the development of Adaptive Optics Systems reaching full sky coverage down to visible wavelengths. In the past few years, various techniques aimed at solving this problemhave been proposed. However only a couple of these has been recentlytested in practice.We report about an experiment aimed at evaluating the performance of one of these techniques called the ‘Elongation Perspective’ technique. Our experiment has been performed using the ALFA system inCalar-Alto (Spain) and involves the simultaneous operation of the 3.6 m and the 2.2 m telescopes at the Observatory.This article describes the telescope configuration used, as well as the datareduction process carried out in order to estimate the scientific objecttilt. The technique performances are discussed in terms of the residualtilt error variance and related correlation coefficient. The analysisshows that, despite the low SNR of our measurements, the atmospheric tiltvariance is reduced to 80% of its initial value corresponding to acorrelation coefficient of about 0.6. To get a betterestimate of the performance achievable using this technique,the tilt error variance due to photon noise in the laser measurementis estimated and removed from the obtained tilt error variance.When this correction is done, thisvariance is reduced to about 50% of its initial value, showingthat the use of this technique can give rise to a significant reduction of the scientific object image motion.