This study evaluates the effects of beacon-wavelength mismatch on phase-compensation performance. In general, beacon-wavelength mismatch occurs at the system level because the beacon-illuminator laser (BIL) and high-energy laser (HEL) are often at different wavelengths. Such is the case, for example, when using an aperture sharing element to isolate the beam-control sensor suite from the blinding nature of the HEL. With that said, this study uses the WavePlex Toolbox in MATLAB® to model ideal spherical wave propagation through various atmospheric-turbulence conditions. To quantify phase-compensation performance, we also model a nominal adaptive-optics (AO) system. We achieve correction from a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor and continuous-face-sheet deformable mirror using a least-squares phase reconstruction algorithm in the Fried geometry and a leaky integrator control law. To this end, we plot the power in the bucket metric as a function of BIL-HEL wavelength difference. Our initial results show that positive BIL-HEL wavelength differences achieve better phase compensation performance compared to negative BIL-HEL wavelength differences (i.e., red BILs outperform blue BILs). This outcome is consistent with past results.

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Allison A. Enterline, Mark F. Spencer, Derek J. Burrell, and Terry J. Brennan, "Impact of beacon wavelength on phase-compensation performance," Proc. SPIE 10410, Unconventional and Indirect Imaging, Image Reconstruction, and Wavefront Sensing 2017, 1041002 (Presented at SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications: August 09, 2017; Published: 6 September 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2270495.