Specialized wavefront sensors for adaptive optics

The performance of an adaptive optical system is strongly dependent upon correctly measuring the wavefront of the arriving light. The most common wavefront measurement techniques used to date are the shearing interferometer and the Shack-Hartmann sensor. Shack-Hartmann sensors rely on the use of lenslet arrays to sample the aperture appropriately. These have traditionally been constructed using MLM or step and repeat technology, and more recently with binary optics technology. Diffractive optics fabrication methodology can be used to remove some of the limitations of the previous technologies and can allow for low-cost production of sophisticated elements. We have investigated several different specialized wavefront sensor configurations using both Shack-Hartmann and shearing interferometer principles. We have taken advantage of the arbitrary nature of these elements to match pupil shapes of detector and telescope aperture and to introduce magnification between the lenslet array and the detector. We have fabricated elements that facilitate matching the sampling to the current atmospheric conditions. The sensors were designed using a far-field diffraction model and a photolithography layout program. They were fabricated using photolithography and RIE etching. Several different designs are presented with some experimental results from a small-scale adaptive optics brass-board.