Methods for the performance enhancement and the error characterization of large diameter ground-based diffractive telescopes

Optics Express
Haolin ZhangZhenwu Lu

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the improvement of ground-based telescopes based on diffractive primary lenses, which provide larger aperture and relaxed surface tolerance compared to non-diffractive telescopes. We performed two different studies devised to thoroughly characterize and improve the performance of ground-based diffractive telescopes. On the one hand, we experimentally validated the suitability of the stitching error theory, useful to characterize the error performance of subaperture diffractive telescopes. On the other hand, we proposed a novel ground-based telescope incorporated in a Cassegrain architecture, leading to a telescope with enhanced performance. To test the stitching error theory, a 300 mm diameter, 2000 mm focal length transmissive stitching diffractive telescope, based on a three-belt subaperture primary lens, was designed and implemented. The telescope achieves a 78 cy/mm resolution within 0.15 degree field of view while the working wavelength ranges from 582.8 nm to 682.8 nm without any stitching error. However, the long optical track (35.49 m) introduces air turbulence that reduces the final images contrast in the ground-based test. To enhance this result, a same diameter compacted Cassegrain ground-bas...Continue Reading

References

Jun 1, 2007·Applied Optics·Geoff Andersen, Drew Tullson
Mar 8, 2008·Applied Optics·R A Hyde
Oct 1, 2008·Optics Express·Hua LiuHonxin Zhang
Jan 1, 1992·Applied Optics·D A Buralli, G M Morris
Feb 12, 2014·Applied Optics·Guang JinYong Yan

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