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A wavefront sensor is a device which measures the wavefront aberration in a coherent signal to describe the optical quality or lack thereof in an optical system. There are many applications that include adaptive optics , optical metrology and even the measurement of the aberrations in the eye itself.
In optics, aberration is a property of optical systems, such as lenses, ... which tend to low-pass filter fine spatial definition in the wavefront.
For light to converge to a perfect point, the wavefront emerging from the optical system must be a perfect sphere centered on the image point. The distance in micrometers between the actual wavefront and the ideal wavefront is the wavefront aberration, which is the standard method of showing the aberrations of the eye.
The wavefront of an aberrated image (left) can be measured using a wavefront sensor (center) and then corrected for using a deformable mirror (right). Adaptive optics ( AO ) is a technique of precisely deforming a mirror in order to compensate for light distortion.
Piston and tilt are not actually true optical aberrations, as they do not represent or model curvature in the wavefront. Defocus is the lowest order true optical aberration. If piston and tilt are subtracted from an otherwise perfect wavefront, a perfect, aberration-free image is formed.
Consequently, any phase aberration can be approximated by a set of discrete tilts. By sampling the wavefront with an array of lenslets, all of these local tilts can be measured and the whole wavefront reconstructed. Since only tilts are measured the Shack–Hartmann cannot detect discontinuous steps in the wavefront.
Coma of a single lens. Each cone of light focuses on different planes along the optical axis. In optics (especially telescopes), the coma (/ ˈ k oʊ m ə /), or comatic aberration, in an optical system refers to aberration inherent to certain optical designs or due to imperfection in the lens or other components that results in off-axis point sources such as stars appearing distorted ...
A wavefront splitting interferometer divides a light wavefront emerging from a point or a narrow slit (i.e. spatially coherent light) and, after allowing the two parts of the wavefront to travel through different paths, allows them to recombine. [13] Fig. 5 illustrates Young's interference experiment and Lloyd's mirror.