Phasing segmented mirrors: A modification of the keck narrow–band technique and its application to extremely large telescopes

Future telescopes with diameters greater than 10 m, usually referred to as extremely large telescopes (ELTs), will employ segmented mirrors made up of hundreds or even thousands of segments, with tight constraints on the piston errors between individual segments. The 10–m Keck telescopes are routinely phased with the narrow–band phasing technique. This is a variation of the Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor in which the signal is the correlation between individual subimages and simulated images. We have investigated the applicability of this technique to ELTs, and in the process we have developed what to our knowledge is a new algorithm in which each subimage provides on its own a piston–dependent value. We also discuss an alternative algorithm to resolve the » ambiguity that allows detection of problematic cases, and a modification of the singular–value–decomposition procedure used to phase the whole mirror, using weightings on individual measurement errors. By means of simulations we show that the modified technique shows improved performance and that it can work with sufficient precision on telescopes as large as 100 m.