Dissertation
Predicting the future: Predictive control for astronomical adaptive optics
The field of exoplanet research is rapidly advancing through the development of new technology, observing techniques, and post-processing methods.
- Author
- Kooten, M.A.M. van
- Date
- 04 November 2020
- Links
- Thesis in Leiden Repository
The field of exoplanet research is rapidly advancing through the development of new technology, observing techniques, and post-processing methods. In the last 30 years, thousands of exoplanet candidates have been found through various methods. These discoveries have revealed a zoo of exoplanetary systems looking very different from our own Solar System. This dissertation contains two very distinctive parts, both related to the measurement of exoplanetary systems.The first part of this dissertation, Chapter 2, investigates 8 light curves found in the Kepler data archive. These light curves show periodic brightening events that look different from a normal exoplanet signal. The second part of this dissertation, focuses on high-contrast imaging (HCI). Current HCI instruments are more sensitive to exoplanets orbiting far out from their host star. To probe the regions close-in to the star, the extreme adaptive optics (XAO) subsystem needs to improve in performance. Specifically, the XAO does not correct well enough for the continuous evolution of turbulence during the time it takes the XAO to measure the phase and subsequently correct for the aberrations (resulting in the servo-lag error). This dissertation focuses on data-driven predictive control to address the servo-lag error.