Simulation and analysis of co-phasing errors of the segmented primary mirror tiled by hexagonal segments in LOT

In this paper, co-phasing errors of a segmented primary mirror tiled by hexagonal segments are successfully calculated for the 12-meter Large aperture Optical/infrared Telescope (LOT). Co-phasing errors including out-of-plane errors are simulated separately and comprehensively based on several software simulation platforms. PAOLA simulation results show that the Strehl Ratio (SR) of LOT is larger than 0.8 when the RMS value of tip-tilt obeying a normal distribution is less than 0.018 arcsec, and the SR of LOT is larger than 0.8 when the RMS value of piston obeying a normal distribution is less than 40 nm. Besides, simulation results of Zemax show that the SR of LOT is larger than 0.8 when the RMS value of tip-tilt obeying a normal distribution is less than 0.02 arcsec, and the SR of LOT is larger than 0.8 when the RMS value of piston obeying a normal distribution is less than 40 nm. These simulation results successfully lay a solid foundation for LOT (especially the segmented primary mirror with active optics).

Point-to-point stabilized optical frequency transfer with active optics

Timescale comparison between optical atomic clocks over ground-to-space and terrestrial free-space laser links will have enormous benefits for fundamental and applied sciences. However, atmospheric turbulence creates phase noise and beam wander that degrade the measurement precision. Here we report on phase-stabilized optical frequency transfer over a 265 m horizontal point-to-point free-space link between optical terminals with active tip-tilt mirrors to suppress beam wander, in a compact, human-portable set-up. A phase-stabilized 715 m underground optical fiber link between the two terminals is used to measure the performance of the free-space link. The active optical terminals enable continuous, cycle-slip free, coherent transmission over periods longer than an hour. In this work, we achieve residual instabilities of 2.7 × 10−6 rad2 Hz−1 at 1 Hz in phase, and 1.6 × 10−19 at 40 s of integration in fractional frequency; this performance surpasses the best optical atomic clocks, ensuring clock-limited frequency comparison over turbulent free-space links.