A Local Threshold Checkerboard Algorithm for Adaptive Optics System With a Plenoptic Sensor

Adaptive optics systems will encounter challenges under strong atmospheric turbulence conditions. Recently, a modified approach based on plenoptic sensor has attracted considerable attention. However, after wavefront correction under strong turbulence, we found that the existing wavefront reconstruction algorithm has difficulty in accurately reconstructing the residual aberrations. Therefore, we proposed a local threshold checkerboard algorithm to improve the accuracy of wavefront reconstruction by thresholding specific areas of central sub-apertures of the plenoptic sensor. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm, we designed and built an experimental platform. The platform included a deformable mirror, which we were able to adjust to simulate several different aberration conditions. Afterwards the direct-gradient method was used for correction of the residual aberrations, which were reduced to less than 0.1λ(RMS), demonstrating the effectiveness of our algorithm.