Keck Observatory as an HWO Testbed: validating wavefront sensing and control schemes on a large segmented aperture in parallel with high-contrast science

The Astro2020 Decadal Survey articulated the impact of advancing high contrast imaging technologies for the detection and characterization of habitable worlds in the coming decade: "exploring terrestrial planets outside our Solar System through direct imaging and spectroscopy will advance one of humanity's greatest quests -- the search for habitable environments and life outside of the Solar System. This transformative goal is at the scientific forefront, connecting astronomy, astrobiology, planetary and Earth Science, and is one that captures the imagination of all humankind." The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is the key resource for meeting the ambitious goal of directly imaging and characterizing planets in the habitable zones of the nearest Sun-like stars. Directly imaging an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star requires reaching 10^-10 contrast levels. A key technical barrier to reaching such deep contrast ratios is maintaining wavefront stability on the order of tens of picometers over tens of minutes, in particular in the presence of a segmented primary mirror. Keck Observatory is the only facility in the world with all of the hardware components necessary for validating HWO segment phasing architectures, namely a large segmented primary mirror, capacitive edge sensors, deformable mirror, Zernike wavefront sensor (ZWFS), and high contrast science instruments. Additionally, both observatories could potentially host a laser truss system. Taking advantage of these parallels, we propose to use Keck Observatory as an HWO testbed for developing and validating nested wavefront sensing and control (WFS&C) loop strategies, demonstrating the full system-level segment control architecture for HWO using existing infrastructure. Recently, our team set the stage for this work by using the ZWFS installed on the Keck II telescope to sense the primary mirror segment pistons and control them with the segment actuators in closed-loop, improving the Strehl ratios on the NIRC2 science camera (Salama et al. 2024). In this proposal, we aim to directly address concerns related to control authority, actuator offload, and loop stability -- tasks which require Keck's existing infrastructure, but which do not require picometer wavefront stability. The main objectives of this project are to: (1) Demonstrate closed-loop primary mirror segment control using a combination of ZWFS and edge sensor measurements in parallel with high contrast science data acquisition. (2) Identify barriers to sub-nanometer segment edge phasing between two Keck segments. (3) Complete a laser truss design study for Keck, as a laser truss is the last missing piece of hardware overlap between Keck and HWO for segment phasing architecture validation. (4) Complete a trade study of all sensors and control algorithms tested as part of the above efforts and translate these results into recommendations for HWO architecture and control scheme designs. This proposed program will leverage Keck's unique infrastructure to address one of the highest priority items identified by the The Ultra-Stable Telescope Research and Analysis team: HWO risk mitigation by characterizing the "interaction of nested controls in Control Architecture." Moreover, successful comparisons of observed and predicted performances will validate, on a real operating observatory, the HWO error budget methodology and in particular its approach to nested loops operating at multiple timescales.

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