An Experimental Analysis of Polarization Shearing Interferometer based Wavefront Sensor

A wavefront sensor is the heart of the adaptive optics system. A wavefront sensor in an adaptive optics system, measures the phase changes across the telescope pupil of the incident beam. Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortions in a wavefront sensor and compensating them with a spatial phase modulator such as a deformable mirror. It actively sense and correct the wavefront distortions in the telescope during observations. This paper addresses a real time experiment of Polarized Shearing Interferometer and new developed algorithm for wavefront error estimation. It describes about artificial turbulent medium created in the laboratory and efficient phase extraction algorithm for estimation of the wavefront errors in the Lab VIEW platform.