Invention:
This invention is an adaptive optics (AO) system for broadband and/or polarization dependent light. The system includes a wavefront sensor and compensator, and the compensator splits the broad waveband into different wavelength and/or polarization states, applies compensation, then recombines the light into a single wavefront with distortions that may be compensated by following optical elements of the AO system. The wavefront compensator is based on known optical corrections techniques but applied in a new way.
The area of adaptive optics and correction techniques applied to optical signals is patent dense, but this combination of techniques and application appear to be novel within the field.
Background:
Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology used to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of incoming wavefront distortions by deforming a mirror or applying an optical filter like a spatial light modulator (SLM) in order to compensate for distortions.
In existing AO systems, the compensation is the same for light of all wavelength and polarization states. The system works well as long as the distortions for different wavelength and polarization state are the same. For light sources with a broad range of wavelength and different polarization states, the distortion compensation will be incomplete, leading to greater blur in the spatial resolution in the resulting image. This invention proposes a design of an AO system that can better compensate distortions in broadband and polarized light.
Applications:
- Astronomy
- Remote sensing
- Biomedical imaging
- Microscopy
- High energy optical pulse propagation
Advantages:
- Wider coverage of wavelength
- Works with different polarization states
- Overall, more versatile
