Absolute calibration of Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensor by spherical wavefronts

A method for absolute calibration of Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensor (HSWFS), in which the wavefront differences of several spherical wavefronts are used to determine parameters of HSWFS, is proposed in this paper. The calibration method is introduced and the experiment results and error analysis are presented. Across a pupil with diameter of 2.6 mm, a lenslet array of 20 × 20 sub-apertures with square configuration, and focal length 4 mm, is used to sample the incident wave. The results indicate the uncertainty of the Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensor calibrated by the proposed method, is improved to less than λ/60 PV value and λ/500 RMS value (λ = 635 nm) with modal reconstruction method. Furthermore, the factors affected the results are analyzed. The error analysis suggested that the influences of the factors on the accuracy of reconstruction can be controlled to an accept level.