An experimental study on photon noise limited wavefront sensor

Abstract

An experimental study on the Hartmann type wavefront tilt sensor is carried out at photon noise limitation. The experimental results and analyses show that A/10 sensitivity of wavefront tilt detection for space objects with about 8th astro- nomical magnitude within 1 ms of time has been achieved. An algorithm and computer program related to the luminous flux and corresponding photo-electron rate for wavefront sensor based on photon counting technique has been established and verified by experiments.