The crossed-sine wavefront sensor: first tests and results

TL;DR

The paper introduces the crossed-sine wavefront sensor, demonstrating its initial laboratory tests, potential for high-resolution wavefront measurement, and comparison with laser interferometry.

Contribution

It presents the design, implementation, and initial testing of a novel crossed-sine wavefront sensor for accurate wavefront measurement.

Findings

Successful initial tests with seven phase masks

Potential for high spatial resolution in wavefront sensing

Comparable accuracy to laser interferometers

Abstract

The crossed-sine wavefront sensor (WFS) is a pupil plane wavefront sensor that measures the first derivatives of the wavefront. It is made by three main components: a gradient transmission filter (GTF) built from a product of sine functions rotated by 45 degrees around the optical axis, a 2x2 mini-lens array (MLA) at the focus of the tested optical system and a detector array located on a plane conjugated to the pupil. The basic principle consists in acquiring four pupil images simultaneously, each image being observed from different points located behind the GTF. After the simulation work which demonstrated the wavefront reconstruction capability, we are now in the phase of implementation of the prototype in the lab. The crossed-sine WFS could achieve a simultaneous high spatial resolution at the pupil of the tested optics and absolute measurement accuracy comparable to that attained by laser-interferometers. In this paper we introduce seven customized phase masks and make measurements of them.First tests and resultsare demonstrated, based on which we explore the performance of our crossed-sine WFS and make comparisons with that of the laser-interferomete