Fast wavefront sensing using a hardware parallel classifier chip

Abstract

In most applications of laser technology and optics the beam quality, the ability to focus a laser beam and the achievement of a good optical resolution play an important role. The compensation of distortions using adaptive optics requires fast wavefront measurement. Classical wavefront analysis schemes use matrix operations, which show a nonlinear computation time dependence with matrix size, making it difficult to achieve high-speed control loops at a high resolution. A novel wavefront sensor system is presented using a massively parallel k-nearest neighbor classifier chip in an embedded hardware setup. Our miniaturized sensor is able to detect one optical distortion within about 80 μs allowing its use for high-speed adaptive optics applications.