Novel wavefront sensor used in adaptive optics: Zernike polynomials coefficients sensor

Atmospheric disturbed wavefront with Kolmogoroff spectrum is represented by the Zernike polynomials suggested by R. Noll in 1976. From the irradiance distribution in two defocal planes, one is in the front of focal plane and the other is in the behind focal plane, the response elements for each term of Zernike polynomials with a given detector array and successively the whole response matrix R have been obtained. For an incoming atmospheric disturbed random wavefront WR, with its irradiance distribution detected and the matrix R, it is easy to solve the corresponding coefficients for each term of Zernike polynomials and reconstruct the detected wavefront.