EDiFiSE full-FPGA adaptive optics: first laboratory results using the IACAT optical ground support equipment

This paper reviews the EDiFiSE (Equalized and Diffraction-limited Field Spectrograph Experiment) full-FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) adaptive optics (AO) system and presents its first laboratory results. EDiFiSE is a prototype equalized integral field unit (EIFU) spectrograph for the observation of high-contrast systems in the Willian Herschel Telescope (WHT). Its AO system comprises two independent parallel full-FPGA control loops, one for tip-tilt and one for higher order aberrations. Xilinx's Virtex-4 and Virtex-5 FPGA's fixed point arithmetic and their interfacing with the rest of the AO components and the user have been adequately dealt with, and a very deterministic system with a negligible computational delay has been obtained. The AO system has been recently integrated in laboratory and verified using the IACAT (IAC Atmosphere and Telescope) optical ground support equipment. Closed loop correction bandwidths of 65 Hz for the tip-tilt and 25 Hz for higher order aberrations are obtained. The system has been tested in the visible range for the WHT with a 9 x 9 subpupil configuration, low star magnitude, wind speeds up to 10 m/s and Fried parameter down to 18 cm, and a resolution below the EIFU's fiber section has been obtained.