Implementation and benchmarking of a crosstalk-free method for wavefront Zernike coefficients reconstruction using Shack-Hartmann sensor data

Abstract

In wavefront characterization, often the combination of a Shack-Hartmann sensor and a reconstruction method utilizing the Cartesian derivatives of Zernike circle polynomials (the least-squares method, to be called here Method A) is used, which is known to introduce crosstalk. In \citep{janssen2014zernike} a crosstalk-free analytic expression of the LMS estimator of the wavefront Zernike coefficients is given in terms of wavefront partial derivatives (leading to what we call Method B). Here, we show an implementation of this analytic result where the derivative data are obtained using the Shack-Hartmann sensor and compare it with the conventional least-squares method.