TITLE:
Optical System Design of Inter-Spacecraft Laser Interferometry Telescope
AUTHORS:
Shengnan Chen, Huilin Jiang, Chunyan Wang, Zhe Chen
KEYWORDS:
Laser Interferometry, Telescope, Optical Design, Gravitational Waves
JOURNAL NAME:
Optics and Photonics Journal,
Vol.9 No.8B,
August
9,
2019
ABSTRACT: The fundamental measurement of space gravitational wave detection is to monitor the relative motion between pairs of freely falling test masses using heterodyne laser interferometry to a precision of 10 pm. The masses under test are millions of kilometers apart. The inter-spacecraft laser interferometry telescope deliver laser efficiently from one spacecraft to another. It is an important component of the gravitational wave detection observatory. It needs to meet the requirements of large compression ratio, high image quality and extraordinary stray light suppression ability. Based on the primary aberration theory, the method of the large compression ratio off-axis four-mirror optical system design is explored. After optimization, the system has an entrance pupil of 200 mm, compression ratio of 40 times, scientific field of view (FOV) of ±8 μrad. To facilitate suppressing the stray light and delivering the laser beam to the back-end scientific interferometers, the intermediate images and the real exit pupils are spatially available. Over the full FOV, the maximum root mean square (RMS) wavefront error is less than 0.007λ, PV value is less than 0.03λ (λ = 1064 nm). The image quality is approached to the diffraction-limit. The TTL noise caused by the wavefront error of the telescope is analyzed. The TTL noise in the image space of 300 μrad range is less than 1 × 10-10 m whose slope is lower than 0.6 μm/rad, which is under the noise budget of the laser interferometer space antenna (LISA), satisfying the requirements of space gravitational wave detection.