Neuromorphic Shack-Hartmann wave normal sensing

Abstract

The Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor is widely employed in adaptive optics systems to measure optical aberrations. However, simultaneously achieving high sensitivity and large dynamic range is still challenging, limiting the performance of diagnosing fast-changing turbulence. To overcome this limitation, we propose neuromorphic Shack-Hartmann wave normal sensing (NeuroSH). NeuroSH is a unifying framework that harnesses the computational neuromorphic imaging paradigm to extract the high-dimensional wave normal from temporal diversity measurements. Both numerical analysis and experimental verification demonstrate the feasibility of NeuroSH. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed NeuroSH is the first scheme to surpass the optical dynamic range limitation under challenging dynamic scenarios, thereby advancing ultra-fast turbulence mitigation technology for cutting-edge imagers.