Wavefront sensors for adaptive optical systems

A high precision Shack-Hartmann wavefront (WF) sensor has been developed on the basis of a low-aperture off-axis diffraction lens array. The device is capable of measuring WF slopes at array sub-apertures of 640x640 μm in size with an error not exceeding 4.80 arcsec (0.15 pixel), which corresponds to the standard deviation equal to 0.017 λ at the reconstructed WF with wavelength λ. Also the modification of this sensor for adaptive system of solar telescope using extended scenes as tracking objects, such as sunspot, pores, solar granulation and limb, is presented.

The software package developed for the proposed WF sensors includes three algorithms of local WF slope estimation (modified centroids, normalized cross-correlation and fast Fourier-demodulation), as well as three methods of WF reconstruction (modal Zernike polynomial expansion, deformable mirror response function expansion and phase unwrapping), that can be selected during operation with accordance to the application.