title: Bulk wind estimation and prediction for adaptive optics control systems.
abstract: We present a wind-predictive controller for astronomical adaptive optics (AO) systems that is able to predict the motion of a single windblown layer in the presence of other, more slowly varying phase aberrations. This controller relies on fast, gradient-based optical flow estimation to identify the velocity of the translating layer and a recursive mean estimator to account for turbulence that varies on a time scale much slower than the operating speed of the AO loop. We derive the Cramer-Rao lower bound for the wind estimation problem and show that the proposed estimator is very close to achieving theoretical minimum-variance performance. We also present simulations using on-sky data that show significant Strehl increases from using this controller in realistic atmospheric conditions.
authors.affiliation: Center for Adaptive Optics, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA. ljohnson@ucolick.org
authors.forename: Luke C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Donald T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Gavel
authors.forename: Donald M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Wiberg