Related papers: Quantitative Wavefront sensing with static Foucaul…

Wavefront sensors have now become core components in the fields of metrology of optical systems, biomedical optics, and adaptive optics systems for astronomy. However, none of the designs used or proposed so far achieve simultaneously a…

Wavefront sensing is a widely-used non-interferometric, single-shot, and quantitative technique providing the spatial-phase of a beam. The phase is obtained by integrating the measured wavefront gradient. Complex and random wavefields…

Wavefront sensing in solar adaptive-optics is currently done with correlating Shack-Hartmann sensors, although the spatial- and temporal-resolutions of the phase measurements are then limited by the extremely fast computing required to…

Context. Solar wavefront sensing has been a challenge for astrophysical instrumentalists, due to the low contrast between the Sun and the sky background compared to night-time observations, which limits the performance of adaptive optics…

The sensitivity of the the pyramid wavefront sensor (PyWFS) has made it a popular choice for astronomical adaptive optics (AAO) systems, and it is at its most sensitive when it is used without modulation of the input beam. In non-modulated…

Wavefront sensing with a thin diffuser has emerged as a potential low-cost alternative to a lenslet array for aberrometry. Diffuser wavefront sensors (DWS) have previously relied on tracking speckle displacement and consequently require…

Strong turbulence conditions create amplitude aberrations through the effects of near-field diffraction. When integrated over long optical path lengths, amplitude aberrations (seen as scintillation) can nullify local areas in the recorded…

The Thirty Meter Telescope will use a sophisticated adaptive optics system called NFIRAOS. This system utilizes two deformable mirrors conjugate to 0 km and 11.2 km to apply a Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) correction over a 2…

The Zernike wavefront sensor (ZWFS) stands out as one of the most sensitive optical systems for measuring the phase of an incoming wavefront, reaching photon efficiencies close to the fundamental limit. This quality, combined with the fact…

The next generation of giant ground and space telescopes will have the light-collecting power to detect and characterize potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast imaging for the first time. This will only be…

In this paper, we describe Fourier-based Wave Front Sensors (WFS) as linear integral operators, characterized by their Kernel. In a first part, we derive the dependency of this quantity with respect to the WFS's optical parameters: pupil…

In ground-based astronomy, Adaptive Optics (AO) is a pivotal technique, engineered to correct wavefront phase distortions and thereby enhance the quality of the observed images. Integral to an AO system is the wavefront sensor (WFS), which…

Consistent operation of adaptive optics (AO) systems requires the use of a wavefront sensor (WFS) with high sensitivity and low noise. The nonlinear curvature WFS (nlCWFS) has been shown both in simulations and lab experiments to be more…

In the last two decades many people have been searching for the optimal wavefront sensor as it can boost the performance of high-contrast imagining by orders of magnitude on the ELTs. According classical information theory, the optimal…

Current designs for all three extremely large telescopes show the overwhelming adoption of the pyramid wavefront sensor (P-WFS) as the WFS of choice for adaptive optics (AO) systems sensing on natural guide stars (NGS) or extended objects.…

The Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor is widely used to measure aberrations induced by atmospheric turbulence in adaptive optics systems. However if there exists strong atmospheric turbulence or the brightness of guide stars is low, the…

We present numerical characterizations of the wavefront sensing performance for few-mode photonic lantern wavefront sensors (PLWFSs). These characterizations include calculations of throughput, control space, sensor linearity, and an…

Local amplitude aberrations caused by scintillation can impact the reconstruction process of a wavefront sensor (WFS) by inducing a spatially non-uniform intensity at the pupil plane. This effect is especially relevant for the commonly-used…

Future space telescopes with coronagraph instruments will use a wavefront sensor (WFS) to measure and correct for phase errors and stabilize the stellar intensity in high-contrast images. The HabEx and LUVOIR mission concepts baseline a…

To directly image Earth-like planets, contrast levels of 10^-8 - 10^-10 are required. The next generation of instruments will need wavefront control below the nanometer level to achieve these goals. The Zernike wavefront sensor (ZWFS) is a…