High Resolution Adaptive System with a Phase Knife in the Optical Feedback Loop

Abstract

Conventional adaptive systems, whose key elements are wavefront sensor and electromechanical wavefront corrector, face considerable difficulties, when high-order aberrations’ correction is required [1]. The increase of number of adaptive mirror’s control elements (up to several hundreds, recently [2]) inevitably leads to the sophistication of the sensor for measuring the wavefront “fine structure” and to intensive computations at the stage of wavefront reconstruction. Therefore, new techniques controlling light with light, which do not violate the distributed nature of light wave, attract attention of researchers [3, 4, 5]. There are a number of optically controllable hybrid devices (microchannel modulator [3], liquid crystal light valve (LCLV) [4], and membrane mirror [5]) that may be used for distributed wave front correction. However, the adequate control methods for such correctors should be developed.