Adaptive optics without borders: performance evaluation in the infinite aperture limit

The limit case of an infinite aperture adaptive optics (AO) system eliminates the modeling complications associated with aperture edge effects, and thereby enables the application of simplified methods for system performance evaluation in the spatial frequency domain. We review prior work in this field and describe a new approach that enables a wider range of error sources and AO options to be evaluated with a reduced number of approximations. These errors and AO options include: Fitting error and spatial aliasing for a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (WFS) and one particular deformable mirror influence function; WFS noise; servo lag for a continuous temporal filter function; anisoplanatism in either a single evaluation direction or averaged over an extended field of view; piston removal within a finite aperture; minimum variance and modal wavefront reconstruction algorithms; and multi-conjugate AO. Laser guidestars, however, are excluded. A wide range of classical results for the independent effects of individual error sources can be immediately derived from this integrated model. Performance estimates for more complex problems involving the full range of first-order AO error sources are in good agreement with the results produced by more detailed Monte Carlo simulations.