O Mirror, Where Art Thou?
Abstract
Wavefront sensing reveals that a telescope is misaligned, but not which mirror moved or by how much; inferring the mirror positions themselves turns alignment into a direct correction. We describe a simulation framework for inferring telescope mirror misalignment from multi-field Point Spread Function (PSF) measurements projected onto Circular-Bessel and Zernike basis vectors. Two case studies are presented: a Hubble Space Telescope model with five secondary-mirror degrees of freedom and a three-mirror anastigmat with ten primary and secondary mirror degrees of freedom. In both cases, field-dependent multivariate Gaussian likelihoods are explored with nested sampling and refined with differential evolution. Recovered states are validated with residual PSF images and optical path difference (OPD) measurements. In the Hubble benchmark, differential evolution recovers injected misalignments to less than 0.01 microns and reduces on-axis OPD error from 2.3 waves to 3 x 10E-8 waves. In the TMA study, the posterior shows broad marginals and correlated parameter pairs that suggest partial degeneracies at higher dimension; differential evolution recovers the truth alignment state less precisely than in the Hubble benchmark (less than 17 microns) and reduces on-axis OPD error from 8.24 waves to 2 x 10E-3 waves. This generalizable algorithm enables direct sensing of the state of an optical system and automated alignment.
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BibTeX
@misc{p2026mirror,
title = {{O Mirror, Where Art Thou?}},
author = {Sai Krishanth P. M. and Sanchit Sabhlok and Jaren N. Ashcraft and Kyle Van Gorkom and Ewan S. Douglas},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.33942},
eprint = {2610.33942},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.33942},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - O Mirror, Where Art Thou?
AU - Sai Krishanth P. M.
AU - Sanchit Sabhlok
AU - Jaren N. Ashcraft
AU - Kyle Van Gorkom
AU - Ewan S. Douglas
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/24
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.33942
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.33942
AB - Wavefront sensing reveals that a telescope is misaligned, but not which mirror moved or by how much; inferring the mirror positions themselves turns alignment into a direct correction. We describe a simulation framework for inferring telescope mirror misalignment from multi-field Point Spread Function (PSF) measurements projected onto Circular-Bessel and Zernike basis vectors. Two case studies are presented: a Hubble Space Telescope model with five secondary-mirror degrees of freedom and a three-mirror anastigmat with ten primary and secondary mirror degrees of freedom. In both cases, field-dependent multivariate Gaussian likelihoods are explored with nested sampling and refined with differential evolution. Recovered states are validated with residual PSF images and optical path difference (OPD) measurements. In the Hubble benchmark, differential evolution recovers injected misalignments to less than 0.01 microns and reduces on-axis OPD error from 2.3 waves to 3 x 10E-8 waves. In the TMA study, the posterior shows broad marginals and correlated parameter pairs that suggest partial degeneracies at higher dimension; differential evolution recovers the truth alignment state less precisely than in the Hubble benchmark (less than 17 microns) and reduces on-axis OPD error from 8.24 waves to 2 x 10E-3 waves. This generalizable algorithm enables direct sensing of the state of an optical system and automated alignment.
ER -