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The first scientific observations with adaptive optics (AO) at W. M. Keck Observatory (WMKO) began in 1999. Through 2023, over 1200 refereed science papers have been published using data from the WMKO AO systems. The scientific competitiveness of AO at WMKO has been maintained through a continuous series of AO and instrument upgrades and additions. This tradition continues with AO being a centerpiece of WMKO’s scientific strategic plan for 2035. We will provide an overview of the current and planned AO projects from the context of this strategic plan. The current projects include implementation of new real-time controllers, the KAPA laser tomography system and the HAKA high-order deformable mirror system, the development of multiple advanced wavefront sensing and control techniques, the ORCAS space-based guide star project, and three new AO science instruments. We will also summarize steps toward the future strategic directions which are centered on ground-layer, visible and high-contrast AO. 

Uncorrected residual wavefront errors limit the ultimate performance of adaptive optics (AO) systems. We present different contributing factors and techniques to estimate and compensate these wavefront errors in the Keck natural guide star (NGS) AO systems. The error terms include low order static and semi-static aberrations from multiple sources, periodic and random segment piston errors, single-segment low order aberrations, wavefront sensor aliasing, vibrations, calibration drifts, and AO-to-telescope offload related errors. We present the design of a new AO subsystem, a residual wavefront controller (rWFC) to monitor the performance of the AO control loops and the image quality of the AO science instruments and apply the necessary changes to the telescope and AO parameters to minimize the residual wavefront errors. The distributed system consists of components at the telescope, AO bench and the science instruments. A few components of this system are already tested as on-demand standalone tools and will be integrated into a high-level graphical user interface (GUI) to operate the system. The software tool will periodically collect AO telemetry data, perform control loop parameter optimization and update AO parameters such as loop gains, centroid gain, etc. In addition, the system will analyze the science data at the end of each exposure and estimate telescope/AO performance when a bright point source is available in the science field. The benefits of reducing or eliminating the residual wavefront errors have broad implications for optical astronomy. Testing these techniques on a segmented telescope will be extremely useful to the teams developing high contrast AO systems for all extremely large telescopes and future segmented space telescopes. 

High quality, repeatable point-spread functions are important for science cases like direct exoplanet imaging, high-precision astrometry, and high-resolution spectroscopy of exoplanets. For such demanding applications, the initial on-sky point-spread function delivered by the adaptive optics system can require further optimization to correct unsensed static aberrations and calibration biases. We investigated using the Fast and Furious focal-plane wavefront sensing algorithm as a potential solution. This algorithm uses a simple model of the optical system and focal plane information to measure and correct the point-spread function phase, without using defocused images, meaning it can run concurrently with science. On-sky testing demonstrated significantly improved PSF quality in only a few iterations, with both narrow and broadband filters. These results suggest this algorithm is a useful path forward for creating and maintaining high-quality, repeatable on-sky adaptive optics point-spread functions.