Design and alignment of a space gravitational wave detection telescope based on aberration scale control.

Regulating the proportion of low-order aberrations within total aberrations can effectively alter the tilt-to-length (TTL) coupling noise in a space gravitational wave telescope. Nevertheless, the low-order aberration ratio is disrupted during the actual manufacturing of the telescope. To address this issue, we analyzed the impacts of wavefront errors and low-order aberration proportions on the TTL coupling noise, determined the design requirements, and designed a 400 mm-aperture space gravitational wave telescope optical system. Subsequently, a nonlinear function matrix between the misalignment and Zernike polynomial coefficients was constructed, and an accurate alignment algorithm based on the low-order aberration ratio was proposed to predict the misalignment of optical systems. Finally, 500 sets of misalignment files were randomly generated using the Monte Carlo method, and the degree of misalignment of the optical system was predicted through the algorithm. The results indicated that 90.6% of the misalignment files satisfied the design requirements after a single alignment, whereas the remaining files satisfied the requirements after two alignments. This study offers an effective scheme for designing and installing a space gravitational wave telescope.