Related papers: Fundamental Limits to Phase and Amplitude Estimati…
To reach the full potential of the new generation of ground based telescopes, an extremely fine adjustment of the phase is required. Wavefront control and correction before detection has therefore become one of the cornerstones of…
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…
Advanced wavefront sensors (WFS) are essential for enabling new science cases for telescopes that utilize adaptive optics (AO) systems. While complex field WFS -- those that estimate the electric field phase and amplitude through…
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…
Several types of Wavefront Sensors (WFS) are nowadays available in the field of Adaptive Optics (AO). Generally speaking, their basic principle consists in measuring slopes or curvatures of Wavefront Errors (WFE) transmitted by a telescope,…
The ultimate precision of phase estimation is limited by the Heisenberg scaling $\Delta\phi_0 = K/N$, where $K\sim1$ is a numerical prefactor and $N$ is the mean number of photons interacting with the phase shifting object(s). However,…
This paper introduces a novel wavefront sensing approach that relies on the Fourier analysis of a single conventional direct image. In the high Strehl ratio regime, the relation between the phase measured in the Fourier plane and the…
Wavefront sensing involves estimating the phase and intensity of light, enabling a wide range of imaging applications, from adaptive optics and astronomy to biomedical imaging. Since conventional image sensors can only measure the spatial…
This paper is the third part of a trilogy dealing with the principles, performance and limitations of what I named "Telescope-Interferometers" (TIs). The basic idea consists in transforming one telescope into a Wavefront Error (WFE) sensing…
Most adaptive optics (AO) systems using pyramid wavefront sensors (PyWFS) to estimate the phase of the pupil field use mechanical modulation of the beam in order to increase the dynamic range in low-order modes so the PyWFS can usefully…
In astronomy and microscopy, distortions in the wavefront affect the dynamic range of a high contrast imaging system. These aberrations are either imposed by a turbulent medium such as the atmosphere, by static or thermal aberrations in the…
Continuous wavefront sensing on future space telescopes allows relaxation of stability requirements while still allowing on-orbit diffraction-limited optical performance. We consider the suitability of phase retrieval to continuously…
The use of Wavefront Sensors (WFS) is nowadays fundamental in the field of instrumental optics. This paper discusses the principle of an original and recently proposed new class of WFS. Their principle consists in evaluating the slopes of…
Phase steps are an important type of wavefront aberrations generated by large telescopes with segmented mirrors. In a closed-loop correction cycle these phase steps have to be measured with the highest possible precision using natural…
This paper presents the basic principle and theoretical relationships of an original method allowing to retrieve the Wavefront Errors (WFE) of a ground or space-borne telescope when combining its main pupil with a second, decentered…
We show that the quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound on the precision of measurements of the optical phase gradient, or the wavefront tilt, with a beam of finite width is consistent with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for a single-photon…
A lower bound on unbiased estimates of wavefront errors (WFE) is presented for the linear regime of small perturbation and active control of a high-contrast region (dark hole). Analytical approximations and algorithms for computing the…
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…
Speckle Noise is the dominant source of error in high contrast imaging with adaptive optics system. We discuss the potential for wavefront sensing telemetry to calibrate speckle noise with sufficient precision and accuracy so that it can be…
A new wavefront sensing approach, derived from the successful curvature wavefront sensing concept but using a non-linear phase retrieval wavefront reconstruction scheme, is described. The non-linear curvature wavefront sensor (nlCWFS)…