Modeling of pulsed-laser guide stars for the Thirty Meter Telescope project

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Abstract
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has been designed to include an adaptive optics system and associated laser guide star (LGS) facility to correct for the image distortion due to Earth’s atmospheric turbulence and achieve diffraction-limited imaging. We have calculated the response of mesospheric sodium atoms to a pulsed laser that has been proposed for use in the LGS facility, including modeling of the atomic physics, the light–atom interactions, and the effect of the geomagnetic field and atomic collisions. This particular pulsed-laser format is shown to provide comparable photon return to a continuous-wave (cw) laser of the same average power; both the cw and pulsed lasers have the potential to satisfy the TMT design requirements for photon return flux.
Funding Information
  • Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA)
  • California Institute of Technology
  • University of California
  • National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • National Astronomical Observatories of China
  • Department of Science and Technology of India
  • Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
  • Canada Foundation for Innovation
  • Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation
  • National Research Council of Canada
  • Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
  • British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund
  • Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)
  • U.S. National Science Foundation
  • Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences