Improving neural-network-based prediction models for misalignment in off-axis three-mirror anastigmat telescopes

The performance of a telescope system heavily relies on the precise alignment of the mirrors. The off-axis threemirror anastigmat (TMA) telescope presents unique challenges due to its complex optical design. Each optical element within the off-axis TMA telescope is inherently introduced with theoretical eccentricity and tilt. Furthermore, the incorporation of freeform surfaces and other optical elements with intricate surface features typically leads to low initial alignment accuracy of the optical path. With this low initial alignment accuracy and the noise of the measurements, the prediction of the misalignment of the telescope is getting harder. A fully connected neural network architecture is proposed as a misalignment calculation method for an off-axis TMA telescope system with a freeform surface. Random training data is created by using optical design software. The sensitivity of the mirrors to the wavefront error is quantified and incorporated into the loss function of the neural network to improve prediction accuracy. Adding the noisy measurement samples to the training data creates a noise-immune neural network model. Simulation results show that our model can successfully predict misalignment of the mirrors with noisy measurement values. (c) 2024 Optica Publishing Group. All rights, including for text and data mining (TDM), Artificial Intelligence (AI) training, and similar technologies, are reserved.