Modal compensation of atmospheric turbulence induced wave front aberrations

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Abstract
A power spectral density method for calculating the efficiency of modal compensation of wave front phase error caused by propagation through atmospheric turbulence is presented. The method permits an accurate evaluation of the interactive effects of isoplanatism, outer and inner scale size, control algorithm, servo type, and order of modal compensation on control loop bandwidth requirements. Applications of the method to some typical ground-to-ground and ground-to-space geometries are presented. Anisoplanatism is shown to limit the amount of compensation possible with adaptive optics, particularly in the higher-order aberration modes.