KAPAO Prime: Design and Simulation

KAPAO (KAPAO A Pomona Adaptive Optics instrument) is a dual-band natural guide star adaptive optics system designed to measure and remove atmospheric aberration from Pomona College's telescope atop Table Mountain. We present here, the final optical system, referred to as Prime, designed in Zemax Optical Design Software. Prime is characterized by diffraction limited imaging over the full 73'' field of view of our Andor~Camera at f/33 as well as for our NIR~Xenics~camera at f/50. In~Zemax, tolerances of 1{\%} on OAP focal length and off-axis distance were shown to contribute an additional 4 nm of~wavefront~error (98{\%} confidence) over the~field of view~of the~Andor~camera; the contribution from surface irregularity was determined analytically to be 40nm for~OAPs specified to l/10~surface irregularity. Modeling of the temperature deformation of the breadboard in~SolidWorks~revealed 70 micron contractions along the edges of the board for a decrease of 75\r{ }F; when applied to OAP positions such displacements from the optimal layout are predicted to contribute an additional 20 nanometers of~wavefront~error. Flexure modeling of the breadboard due to gravity is on-going. We hope to begin alignment and testing of ``Prime'' in Q1 2013.