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Full-Text Articles in Optics
Compressive Wavefront Sensing With Weak Values, Gregory A. Howland, Daniel J. Lum, John C. Howell
Compressive Wavefront Sensing With Weak Values, Gregory A. Howland, Daniel J. Lum, John C. Howell
Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research
We demonstrate a wavefront sensor that unites weak measurement and the compressive-sensing, single-pixel camera. Using a high-resolution spatial light modulator (SLM) as a variable waveplate, we weakly couple an optical field’s transverse-position and polarization degrees of freedom. By placing random, binary patterns on the SLM, polarization serves as a meter for directly measuring random projections of the wavefront’s real and imaginary components. Compressive-sensing optimization techniques can then recover the wavefront. We acquire high quality, 256 × 256 pixel images of the wavefront from only 10,000 projections. Photon-counting detectors give sub-picowatt sensitivity.