In adaptive optics system (AOS) for optical telescopes, the reported wavefront sensing strategy consists of two parts: a specific sensor for tip-tilt (TT) detection and another wavefront sensor (WFS) for other distortions detection. Thus, a part of incident light has to be used for TT detection, which decreases the light energy used by wavefront sensor and eventually reduces the precision of wavefront correction.

CIOMP group’s research on liquid crystal adaptive optics began 15 years ago and recently one team proposed an energy saving adaptive optical layout which saves the traditional separated tip-tilt sensor and detects the large amplitude TT and other distortions based on a single Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensor (SHWFS). And a two-step wavefront measurement method is presented to realize the detection for both large TT and other distortions with a single SHWFS.

As the separated TTS seems to be a classic setup in traditional AOS without LGS in astronomical applications for more than 30 years, a method we adopted indicates an effective way to optimize the traditional optical layout in adaptive optics. With this way the AOS is simplified which can avoid the cost and many other mechanical problem.

Furthermore, the proposed method saved light throughput for imaging and wavefront sensing, which means a higher SNR for the WFS and makes it promising to be used to improve the detection capability of the AOS.

In addition, it will be helpful if this method may motivate readers to do some changes in their applications, such as laser communications, laser power, retinal imaging, and adaptive optics microscope and so on. The only disadvantage is its complex data process technique which is not a challenge at all.

(a) Schematic diagram of LCAOS with both TTS and SHWFS. (b) LCAOS based on a single SHWFS.(Image by CIOMP)

Contact

WANG Chongchong

State Key Laboratory of Applied Optics, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin 130033, China

Tel:+86-431-86176016

Email: wangcc1989@163.com