Abstract: During the past 20 years of Adaptive Optics system design, two forms of wavefront sensors - the Shearing Interferometer (SI) and the Hartmann Sensor (HS) - have predominated. Each of these sensors has advantages and disadvantages which must be considered in the light of the requirements of the particular application. As part of Itek's continuing R&D in adaptive optics, we have developed a new form of sensor which can be viewed as a hybridization of the SI and HS. This sensor is called the Phase Visualization (PV) sensor. The PV sensor uses two orthogonal filters whose reflection and transmission vary linearly with position. The four output images from these filters have intensities which are linearly related to the phase gradient in the incident field. Processing the images results in two gradient maps that can be used in standard reconstructor algorithms.!7
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