Multi-object astronomical adaptive-optics (MOAO) is now a mature wide-field
observation mode to enlarge the adaptive-optics-corrected field in a few
specific locations over tens of arc-minutes.
The work-scope provided by open-loop tomography and pupil conjugation is
amenable to a spatio-angular Linear-Quadratic Gaussian (SA-LQG) formulation
aiming to provide enhanced correction across the field with improved
performance over static reconstruction methods and less stringent computational
complexity scaling laws.
Starting from our previous work [1], we use stochastic time-progression
models coupled to approximate sparse measurement operators to outline a
suitable SA-LQG formulation capable of delivering near optimal correction.
Under the spatio-angular framework the wave-fronts are never explicitly
estimated in the volume,providing considerable computational savings on
10m-class telescopes and beyond.
We find that for Raven, a 10m-class MOAO system with two science channels,
the SA-LQG improves the limiting magnitude by two stellar magnitudes when both
Strehl-ratio and Ensquared-energy are used as figures of merit. The
sky-coverage is therefore improved by a factor of 5.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Applied Optic