Experimental validation of closed-loop adaptive optics based on a self-referencing interferometer wavefront sensor and a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator

A closed-loop adaptive optics system based on a self-referencing interferometer wavefront sensor (SRI WFS) using phase-shifting point-diffraction technique and an electrically addressed phase-only liquid-crystal spatial light modulator (LC SLM) is built and validated experimentally. The wavefront aberration of incoming beam is directly measured by analyzing four frames phase-shifted interferograms captured by a single CCD camera in two camera shots, and then by loading the conjugate function onto the SLM the wavefront aberration is corrected. The proposed scheme does not rely on any complicated control algorithm or wavefront-reconstruction algorithm and can achieve high-resolution and high-accuracy correction. Closed-loop correction results of single order Zernike aberrations and a Kolmogorov turbulence phase screen show that considerable improvements in the Strehl ratio (of greater than 0.94) is achieved.