New modal wave-front sensor: a theoretical analysis

Journal article

We present a new design of a modal wave-front sensor capable of measuring directly the Zernike components of an aberrated wave front. The sensor shows good linearity for small aberration amplitudes and is particularly suitable for integration in a closed-loop adaptive system. We introduce a sensitivity matrix and show that it is sparse, and we derive conditions specifying which elements are necessarily zero. The sensor may be temporally or spatially multiplexed, the former using a reconfigurable optical element, the latter using a numerically optimized binary optical element. Different optimization schemes are discussed, and their performance is compared.

Authors: Neil, M; Booth, M; Wilson, T

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 1098-1107
• Publication date: 2000-06-01
• DOI: 10.1364/josaa.17.001098
• EISSN: 1520-8532
• ISSN: 1084-7529
• Language: English