High performance adaptive optics with a reconstructed coherent wave front

A method of performing closed loop correction of phase aberrations, comprising the steps of:

• dividing an incoming beam with an aberrated wave front into a first input beam and a second input beam;
• reflecting, with a microelectromechanical system, the first input beam onto an image plane;
• spatially filtering the second input beam to form a reference beam;
• interfering the reference beam with the first input beam on the image plane to form a hologram;
• capturing an image of the hologram on the image plane;
• Fourier transforming the captured image to generate a transform including a first object image, a conjugate object image, and an auto-correlation image;
• truncating the transform to exclude the conjugate object image and the auto-correlation image;
• inverse Fourier transforming the truncated transform to generate amplitude and phase information about the aberrated wave front;
• generating control signals for mitigating aberrations in the aberrated wave front via phase conjugation based on the amplitude and phase information, and
• providing the control signals to the microelectromechanical system.

A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions for performing closed loop correction of phase aberrations, wherein execution of the one or more sequences of instructions by one or more processors causes the one or more processors to perform the steps of:

• capturing an image of a hologram formed by interfering a first input beam with a desirably tilted reference beam;
• Fourier transforming the captured image to generate a transform including a first object image, a conjugate object image, and an auto-correlation image;
• truncating the transform to exclude the conjugate object image and the auto-correlation image;
• inverse Fourier transforming the truncated transform to generate amplitude and phase information about an aberrated wave front of the first input beam;
• generating control signals for mitigating aberrations in the aberrated wave front via phase conjugation based on the amplitude and phase information, and
• providing the control signals to a microelectromechanical system.