title: Sensing wave-front amplitude and phase with phase diversity.
abstract: We show in benchtop experiments that wave-front phase estimation by phase diversity can be significantly improved by simultaneous amplitude estimation. Processing speed, which will be important for real-time wave-front control applications, can be enhanced by use of small-format detectors with pixels that do not fully sample the diffraction limit. Using an object-independent phase-diversity algorithm, we show that, for both pointlike and extended objects, the fidelity of the phase and amplitude estimates degrades gracefully, rather than catastrophically, as the sampling becomes coarser. We show in simulation that the same algorithm also improves the fidelity of image reconstruction of complex targets.
authors: Maui Scientific Research Center, the University of New Mexico, Kihei, Hawaii 96753, USA. stuartj@ahpcc.unm.edu
authors: Stuart M
authors: SM
authors: Jefferies
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Lloyd-Hart
authors: E Keith
authors: EK
authors: Hege
authors: James
authors: J
authors: Georges