Advanced Real-Time Control Strategies for the Next Generation of Giant Telescopes

The era of Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) has arrived. In order to capture sharp images of exoplanets and the distant universe, these giants must look through the turbulent atmosphere, which blurs their vision. The solution is adaptive optics (AO), a technology that reshapes mirrors thousands of times per second to deliver diffraction-limited performance.

INAF-Arcetri plays a leading global role in the development of Adaptive Optics (AO) for the ESO Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). Our team is responsible for the control systems of flagship instruments like MORFEO (Multiconjugate adaptive Optics Relay For ELT Observations), MAVIS (MCAO Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph) and ANDES (ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph). We deal with thousands of actuators, kHz-rate corrections, and massive data streams.

We offer Master's thesis opportunities to explore novel control strategies that will define the performance of these future observatories. The work can be tailored to the student's background and interests.

Areas of Research:
- Theoretical: Design of controllers and stability analysis.
- Computational: Real-time optimization of control matrices and latency minimization.
- High-Performance Simulation: GPU-accelerated simulations of the MORFEO system.
- Experimental: Testing control laws on laboratory optical benches or through end-to-end simulations.