Performance analysis of field-of-view shifted Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor based on splitter

Abstract

We report on a field-of-view shifted Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor based on a splitter designed to measure the wavefront information of object light with strong background. The analysis results indicate that increasing the ratio of the signal beam intensity to the incoming beam intensity and reducing the sampling frequency of CCD2 (detecting the pure background light) can properly enhance the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) of the object light. A special noise removing algorithm was presented to enhance the centroid measuring accuracy, and it was proved to be effective against the residual noises caused by the differences between the two beam paths. The experimental results indicate that the field-of-view shifted Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor based on a splitter can exactly measure the wavefront information from the object with strong background.