The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wavefront chromaticity and scintillation on the PSF contrast achievable by ground-based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wavefront sensing schemes. I show that “classical” AO (sensing in the visible, imaging in the near-IR) is limited to about $10^5$ PSF contrast in the central arcsecond because of scintillation chromaticity.

This comparative study shows that a focal-plane based wavefront sensor (WFS), combining wavefront sensing and scientific imaging on the same detector is optimal for high contrast imaging. This approach combines high WFS sensitivity, immunity to aliasing and non common path errors and optical design simplicity. Its theoretical performance is compared to commonly used WFSs, illustrating the advantages of this technique.

I show that such a system can be efficiently used as a second stage after a low-order AO system. Control and data reduction algorithms are presented, as well as possible optical designs incorporating a coronagraph. A laboratory demonstration of this technique is currently being done at Subaru Telescope.