The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument, under development for the Subaru Telescope, has currently the fastest on-sky wavefront control loop, with a pyramid wavefront sensor running at 3.5 kHz. But even at that speed, we are still limited by low-frequency vibrations. The current main limitation was found to be vibrations attributed mainly to the rotation of the telescope. Using the fast wavefront sensors, cameras and accelerometers, we managed to identify the origin of most of the vibrations degrading our performance. Low-frequency vibrations are coming from the telescope drive in azimuth and elevation, as well as the elevation encoders when the target is at transit. Other vibrations were found at higher frequency coming from the image rotator inside Subaru's adaptive optics facility AO188. Different approaches are being implemented to take care of these issues. The PID control of the image rotator has been tuned to reduce their high-frequency contribution. We are working with the telescope team to tune the motor drives and reduce the impact of the elevation encoder. A Linear Quadratic Gaussian controller (LQG, or Kalman filter) is also being implemented inside SCExAO to control these vibrations. These solutions will not only improve significantly SCExAOs performance, but will also help all the other instruments on the Subaru Telescope, especially the ones behind A0188. Ultimately, this study will also help the development of the TMT, as these two telescopes share very similar drives.

We present measurements of the evolutionary timescales of speckles around adaptive optics-corrected PSFs. We placed a SELEX SAPHIRA HgCdTe detector behind the SCExA0 instrument at Subaru Telescope. We analyzed the behavior of speckles at radial distances of 2-8 A/D away from the diffraction-limited PSF in H-band (-1.6 m) images collected at 1 kHz framerates. Speckles evolve with a variety of timescales, and these have not previously been studied at near-infrared wavelengths. Ultimately we would like to image reflected-light exoplanets, which necessitates a fast speckle control loop. Based on our measurements, we calculate the parameters of an optimized control loop that would enable such observations.

As of July 2012, 777 exoplanets have been discovered utilizing mainly indirect detection techniques. The direct imaging of exoplanets is the next goal for astronomers, because it will reveal the diversity of planets and planetary systems, and will give access to the exoplanet's chemical composition via spectroscopy. With this spectroscopic knowledge, astronomers will be able to know, if a planet is terrestrial and, possibly, even find evidence of life. With so much potential, this branch of astronomy has also captivated the general public attention. The direct imaging of exoplanets remains a challenging task, due to (i) the extremely high contrast between the parent star and the orbiting exoplanet and (ii) their small angular separation. For ground-based observatories, this task is made even more difficult, due to the presence of atmospheric turbulence. High Contrast Imaging (HCI) instruments have been designed to meet this challenge. HCI instruments are usually composed of a coronagraph coupled with the full on-axis corrective capability of an Extreme Adaptive Optics (ExAO) system. An efficient coronagraph separates the faint planet's light from the much brighter starlight, but the dynamic boiling speckles, created by the stellar image, make exoplanet detection impossible without the help of a wavefront correction device. The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) system is a high performance HCI instrument developed at Subaru Telescope. The wavefront control system of SCExAO consists of three wavefront sensors (WFS) coupled with a 1024-actuator Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) deformable mirror (DM). MEMS DMs offer a large actuator density, allowing high count DMs to be deployed in small size beams. Therefore, MEMS DMs are an attractive technology for Adaptive Optics (AO) systems and are particularly well suited for HCI instruments employing ExAO technologies. SCExAO uses coherent light modulation in the focal plane introduced by the DM, for both wavefront sensing and correction. In this scheme, the DM is used to introduce known aberrations (speckles in the focal plane), which interfere with existing speckles. By monitoring the interference between the pre-existing speckles and the speckles added deliberately by the DM, it is possible to reconstruct the complex amplitude (amplitude and phase) of the focal plane speckles. Thus, the DM is used for wavefront sensing, in a scheme akin to phase diversity. For SCExAO and other HCI systems using phase diversity, the wavefront compensation is a mix of closed-loop and open-loop control of the DM. The successful implementation of MEMS DMs open-loop control relies on a thorough modelling of the DM response to the control system commands. The work presented in this thesis, motivated by the need to provide accurate DM control for the wavefront control system of SCExAO, was centred around the development of MEMS DM models. This dissertation reports the characterization of MEMS DMs and the development of two efficient modelling approaches. The open-loop performance of both approaches has been investigated. The model providing the best result has been implemented within the SCExAO wavefront control software. Within SCExAO, the model was used to command the DM to create focal plane speckles. The work is now focused on using the model within a full speckle nulling process and on increasing the execution speed to make the model suitable for on-sky operation. / Graduate

We present an overview of the current and future adaptive optics systems at the LBTO along with the current and planned science instruments they feed. All the AO systems make use of the two 672 actuator adaptive secondary mirrors. They are (1) FLAO (NGS/SCAO) feeding the LUCI NIR imagers/spectrographs; (2) LBTI/AO (NGS/SCAO) feeding the NIR/MIR imagers and LBTI beam combiner; (3) the ARGOS LGS GLAO system feeding LUCIs; and (4) LINO-NIRVANA - an NGS/MCAO imager and interferometer system. AO performance of the current systems is presented along with proposed performances for the newer systems taking into account the future instrumentation.