Integrated modeling of the GMT laser tomography adaptive optics system

Laser Tomography Adaptive Optics (LTAO) is one of adaptive optics systems planned for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). End-to-end simulation tools that are able to cope with the complexity and computational burden of the AO systems to be installed on the extremely large telescopes such as GMT prove to be an integral part of the GMT LTAO system development endeavors. SL95, the Fortran 95 Simulation Library, is one of the software tools successfully used for the LTAO system end-to-end simulations. The goal of SL95 project is to provide a complete set of generic, richly parameterized mathematical models for key elements of the segmented telescope wavefront control systems including both active and adaptive optics as well as the models for atmospheric turbulence, extended light sources like Laser Guide Stars (LGS), light propagation engines and closed-loop controllers. The library is implemented as a hierarchical collection of classes capable of mutual interaction, which allows one to assemble complex wavefront control system configurations with multiple interacting control channels. In this paper we demonstrate the SL95 capabilities by building an integrated end-to-end model of the GMT LTAO system with 7 control channels: LGS tomography with Adaptive Secondary and on-instrument deformable mirrors, tip-tilt and vibration control, LGS stabilization, LGS focus control, truth sensor-based dynamic noncommon path aberration rejection, pupil position control, SLODAR-like embedded turbulence profiler. The rich parameterization of the SL95 classes allows to build detailed error budgets propagating through the system multiple errors and perturbations such as turbulence-, telescope-, telescope misalignment-, segment phasing error-, non-common path-induced aberrations, sensor noises, deformable mirror-to-sensor mis-registration, vibration, temporal errors, etc. We will present a short description of the SL95 architecture, as well as the sample GMT LTAO system simulation results.