Modal wavefront reconstruction over general shaped aperture by numerical orthogonal polynomials

Abstract

In practical optical measurements, the wavefront data are recorded by pixelated imaging sensors. The closed-form analytical base polynomial will lose its orthogonality in the discrete wavefront database. For a wavefront with an irregularly shaped aperture, the corresponding analytical base polynomials are laboriously derived. The use of numerical orthogonal polynomials for reconstructing a wavefront with a general shaped aperture over the discrete data points is presented. Numerical polynomials are orthogonal over the discrete data points regardless of the boundary shape of the aperture. The performance of numerical orthogonal polynomials is confirmed by theoretical analysis and experiments. The results demonstrate the adaptability, validity, and accuracy of numerical orthogonal polynomials for estimating the wavefront over a general shaped aperture from regular boundary to an irregular boundary.