The bright pyramid wavefront sensor

Extreme adaptive optics (AO) is crucial for enabling the contrasts needed for ground-based high contrast imaging instruments to detect exoplanets. Pushing exoplanet imaging detection sensitivities towards lower mass, closer separations, and older planets will require upgrading AO wavefront sensors (WFSs) to be more efficient. In particular, future WFS designs will aim to improve a WFS’s measurement error (i.e., the wavefront level at which photon noise, detector noise, and/or sky background limits a WFS measurement) and linearity (i.e., the wavefront level, in the absence of photon noise, aliasing, and servo lag, at which an AO loop can close and the corresponding closed-loop residual level). We present one such design here called the bright pyramid WFS (bPWFS), which improves both the linearity and measurement errors as compared to the non-modulated pyramid WFS (PWFS). The bPWFS is a unique design that, unlike other WFSs, doesn’t sacrifice measurement error for linearity, potentially enabling this WFS to (a) close the AO loop on open loop turbulence utilising a tip/tilt modulation mirror (i.e., a modulated bPWFS; analogous to the procedure used for the regular modulated PWFS), and (b) reach deeper closed-loop residual wavefront levels (i.e., improving both linearity and measurement error) compared to the regular non-modulated PWFS. The latter approach could be particularly beneficial to enable improved AO performance using the bWFS as a second stage AO WFS. In this paper we will present an AO error budget analysis of the non-modulated bPWFS as well as supporting AO testbed results from the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory.