Embedded solar adaptive optics telescope: achieving compact integration for high-efficiency solar observations
嵌入式太阳自适应光学望远镜：实现高效太阳观测的紧凑集成
組み込まれた太陽適応光学望遠鏡：高効率太陽観測のためのコンパクトな統合を達成する
임베디드 태양 적응 광학 망원경: 고효율 태양 관측을 위한 컴팩트 통합
Telescopio de óptica solar adaptativa incorporado: lograr una integración compacta para observaciones solares de alta eficiencia
Télescope solaire intégré à optique adaptative : une intégration compacte pour des observations solaires à haut rendement
Встроенный солнечный адаптивный оптический телескоп: достижение компактной интеграции для высокоэффективного наблюдения за солнцем
Naiting Gu ¹, Hao Chen ² ³, Ao Tang ² ³ ⁴, Xinlong Fan ² ³, Carlos Quintero Noda ⁵ ⁶, Yawei Xiao ² ³ ⁴, Libo Zhong ² ³, Xiaosong Wu ² ³ ⁴, Zhenyu Zhang ³, Yanrong Yang ⁷, Zao Yi ⁸, Xiaohu Wu ⁹, Linhai Huang ² ³ ⁴, Changhui Rao ² ³ ⁴
¹ College of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
中国 长沙 国防科技大学前沿交叉学科学院
² National Laboratory on Adaptive Optics, Chengdu 610209, China
中国 成都 自适应光学全国重点实验室
³ Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610209, China
中国 成都 中国科学院光电技术研究所
⁴ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101408, China
中国 北京 中国科学院大学
⁵ Departanmento de Astrofísica, Univ. De La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife E-38025, Spain
⁶ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife E-38025, Spain
⁷ Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu 610075, China
中国 成都 成都中医药大学
⁸ Joint Laboratory for Extreme Conditions Matter Properties, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, China
中国 绵阳 西南科技大学 极端条件物质特性联合实验室
⁹ Thermal Science Research Center, Shandong Institute of Advanced Technology, Jinan 250100, China
山东高等技术研究院 热科学与工程研究中心
Adaptive optics (AO) has significantly advanced high-resolution solar observations by mitigating atmospheric turbulence. However, traditional post-focal AO systems suffer from external configurations that introduce excessive optical surfaces, reduced light throughput, and instrumental polarization.
To address these limitations, we propose an embedded solar adaptive optics telescope (ESAOT) that intrinsically incorporates the solar AO (SAO) subsystem within the telescope's optical train, featuring a co-designed correction chain with a single Hartmann-shack full-wavefront sensor (HS f-WFS) and a deformable secondary mirror (DSM). The HS f-WFS uses temporal-spatial hybrid sampling technique to simultaneously resolve tip-tilt and high-order aberrations, while the DSM performs real-time compensation through adaptive modal optimization.
This unified architecture achieves symmetrical polarization suppression and high system throughput by minimizing optical surfaces. A 600 mm ESAOT prototype incorporating a 12×12 micro-lens array HS f-WFS and 61-actuator piezoelectric DSM has been developed and successfully conducted on-sky photospheric observations. Validations including turbulence simulations, optical bench testing, and practical observations at the Lijiang observatory collectively confirm the system's capability to maintain about λ/10 wavefront error during active region tracking.
This architectural breakthrough of the ESAOT addresses long-standing SAO integration challenges in solar astronomy and provides scalability analyses confirming direct applicability to the existing and future large solar observation facilities.
