Future Extremely Large Telescopes will adopt segmented primary mirrors with
several hundreds of segments. Cophasing of the segments together is essential
to reach high wavefront quality. The phasing sensor must be able to maintain
very high phasing accuracy during the observations, while being able to phase
segments dephased by several micrometers. The Zernike phase contrast sensor has
been demonstrated on-sky at the Very Large Telescope. We present the
multi-wavelength scheme that has been implemented to extend the capture range
from \pmlambda/2 on the wavefront to many micrometers, demonstrating that it is
successful at phasing mirrors with piston errors up to \pm4.0 micron on the
wavefront. We discuss the results at different levels and conclude with a
phasing strategy for a future Extremely Large Telescope.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Applied
Optics; he final publised version is available on the OSA website:
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?msid=13671