Integration and test of a test bench for the study of Next Generation of Extreme Adaptive Optics systems: Cascading AO

Next-generation astronomical and high-resolution imaging ground-based systems rely on Adaptive Optics (AO) to compensate for atmospheric turbulence and instrumental aberrations. To achieve the requisite performance, in the next future many existing or planned AO systems will move toward cascade configurations employing multiple stages to enhance correction and image contrast. This work addresses the engineering challenge of building a high-fidelity, complex optomechanical testbed to study and validate such multi-stage AO architectures.

The thesis work includes:
- component testing: i.e. characterisation of all optomechanical components constituting the bench (already in-house);
- integration and test of the first optical relay and of the Pyramid Wavefront Sensor (WFS) — a critical component for high-order sensing;
- development of the system's overall control strategy;
- optional: second-stage integration (operating at a higher duty cycle for enhanced correction speed).