Kalman filtering to suppress spurious signals in adaptive optics control

In many scenarios, an adaptive optics (AO) control system operates in the presence of temporally non-white noise. We use a Kalman filter with a state space formulation that allows suppression of this colored noise, hence improving residual error over the case where the noise is assumed to be white. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this new filter in the case of the estimated Gemini Planet Imager tip-tilt environment, where there are both common-path and non-common-path vibrations. We discuss how this same framework can also be used to suppress spatial aliasing during predictive wavefront control assuming frozen flow in a low-order AO system without a spatially filtered wavefront sensor, and present experimental measurements from Altair that clearly reveal these aliased components.