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arXiv · 2607.26543

Impact of microlens shape on the performance of Laser Guide Star wavefront sensors for ELT-class telescopes

Paul Rouquette·Benoit Neichel·Cédric Taisir Heritierc·Pierre Jouve·Anne Costille·Kjetil Dohlen·Thierry Fusco
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Abstract

Laser Guide Star (LGS) adaptive optics systems on extremely large telescopes (ELTs) rely on Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors (SHWFS) equipped with large-format microlens arrays. Manufacturing imperfections in the microlens surface profile degrade spot quality and reduce centroiding accuracy, yet this effect is rarely quantified in the context of full AO system performance. This paper presents a comprehensive characterization of the impact of microlens shape on LGS wavefront sensing, using the MORFEO-HARMONI LGS wavefront sensor design as the primary test case, results are directly applicable to any ELT-class or future large-telescope LGS instrument, including systems on the GMT and TMT. Starting from interferometric surface profile measurements of prototype microlenses, we derive the induced phase errors and compute the degradation of center-of-gravity (CoG) spot detection accuracy as a function of LGS elongation and flux. A real microlens degrades CoG variance by a factor of 1.8 to 2.4 compared to an ideal lens, equivalent to requiring approximately twice the photon flux to maintain the same measurement accuracy. This effect is shown to decrease with increasing LGS elongation, and to improve with higher microlens sag. The per-subaperture flux-loss model is then propagated into tomographic AO end-to-end simulations, where measurement redundancy across multiple LGS and MMSE reconstructor weighting partially mitigate the penalty, reducing the effective Strehl ratio flux loss to factors of 1.25-1.4. Experimental validation is provided with the LGS wavefront sensor optical bench prototype at LAM, which also enables full-array characterization in a single measurement. The methodology is broadly applicable to any Shack-Hartmann system operating in a low-flux regime.

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Paul Rouquette, Benoit Neichel, Cédric Taisir Heritierc, Pierre Jouve, Anne Costille, Kjetil Dohlen, Thierry Fusco. 2026-07-29. Impact of microlens shape on the performance of Laser Guide Star wavefront sensors for ELT-class telescopes. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.26543

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