Shot noise performance of Hartmann and shearing interferometer wavefront sensors

Byron M. Welsh; Brent L. Ellerbroek; Michael C. Roggemann; Timothy L. Pennington

doi:10.1117/12.217746

25 August 1995 Shot noise performance of Hartmann and shearing interferometer wavefront sensors

Byron M. Welsh, Brent L. Ellerbroek, Michael C. Roggemann, Timothy L. Pennington

Proceedings Volume 2534, Adaptive Optical Systems and Applications; (1995) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.217746
Event: SPIE's 1995 International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation, 1995, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The performance of a ground-based optical imaging system is severely degraded from the diffraction limit by the random effects of the atmosphere. Adaptive optics techniques have been used to compensate for atmospheric turbulence effects. A critical component in the adaptive optics system is the wavefront sensor. Presently, two types of sensors are common: the Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensor and the shearing interferometer wavefront sensor. In this paper we make a direct performance comparison of these two sensors. The performance calculations are restricted to common configurations of these two sensors and the fundamental limits imposed by shot noise and atmospheric effects. These two effects encompass the effects of extended reference beacons and sensor subaperture spacings larger than the Fried parameter, r_o. Our results indicate comparable performance for good seeing conditions, and small beacons. However, for poor seeing conditions and extended beacons, the Hartmann sensor has lower error levels than the Shearing interferometer.

Citation Download Citation

Byron M. Welsh, Brent L. Ellerbroek, Michael C. Roggemann, and Timothy L. Pennington "Shot noise performance of Hartmann and shearing interferometer wavefront sensors", Proc. SPIE 2534, Adaptive Optical Systems and Applications, (25 August 1995); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.217746

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