Date of Award

7-6-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2016.

Department

Electrical Engineering

First Advisor

Chris Weber

Second Advisor

Sally Wood

Abstract

Wavefront reconstruction techniques have enabled important scientific improvements to corrective imaging in astronomy, optometry, and elsewhere. Here, we describe the design of a wavefront reconstruction-based adaptive optics system designed at Santa Clara University (SCU) in the Department of Physics. Our compact system is based on a modified Shack-Hartmann sensor design and can detect wavefront disturbances on the order of tens of nanometers. The full SCU system includes a 635 nm laser, a collimating lens pair, two mirrors, a microlens array, and a commercial CCD camera. The CCD data is analyzed using a least-squares reconstruction algorithm. Here, we present preliminary wavefront reconstruction results obtained with our setup for wavefront perturbations caused by either lens tilt effects or heat-induced air density fluctuations.

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