| Abstract : | Here we shall describe the development of PRL Adaptive Optics (AO) Simulation Software to model and simulate the performance of AO based instruments on small to mid sizes (typically 2-3m diameter) ground based optical telescopes. The software is developed in the open source Python package. Several effects that are of importance to astronomical AO systems have been modelled in the computational algorithm e.g. beam propagation through turbulent media, spatial & temporal variability of phase structures over the pupil, correction applied by deformable mirror, residual error map, wave-front sensing and reconstruction of the pupil phase map etc. A user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been developed which can be used for setting up several parameters related to an AO instrument simulation and visualize the performance of various subsystems e.g. incoming phase screen, shape of deformable mirror, residual error map, Strehl ratio of corrected wavefront etc. In the back-end, there are total 13 different processes running in parallel using Python-multiprocessing tools. To gain a better understanding of the system, provisions have been developed to save and retrieve simulation data as well as to modify visualization speed. The software can be easily deployed on any desktop based computer having multi-core processor. The simulation software can be used to find out the optimal hardware components and determine how the instrument behaves under various sky conditions. Additionally, the package would be very helpful in resolving hardware-related problems, which would otherwise be a difficult and time-consuming issue. |
