Control for High Resolution Imaging

High-resolution imaging is crucial in scientific breakthroughs, such as discovering exoplanets in the habitable zone or understanding the origin and progress of diseases at a molecular level. For that purpose, special optical instruments like Extreme Large Telescopes or STED microscopy are developed. Optical aberrations are the key obstacle that hampers a clear vision and invites control engineers to step in. These are the disturbances induced by the medium, like turbulence in the case of astronomy, or by the specimen under investigation, like the change in refraction index due to inhomogeneities in the biological tissue.

Adaptive Optics is a modern way to remove the effect of aberrations. This fascinating and expanding field in science is providing an excellent challenge to control engineers to improve image quality significantly by active control. This course will review the hardware necessary to control light waves in contemporary optical instruments, their modelling from a control engineering perspective, and discuss model-based control methodologies to do disturbance rejection.