Dual-Sensor-Based Robust Adaptive Optics System 2026-08

Researchers at the Applied and Adaptive Optics Laboratory of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) have designed and demonstrated a novel dual-sensor-based adaptive optics (ds-AO) system that combines two wavefront sensing techniques within a single optical configuration. The research
has been published in the Q1 journal Applied Physics Letters.

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of the experimental arrangement to implement the proposed programmable ds- AO system is shown in (a) and the actual photograph is shown in (b).
In this work, the researchers developed a programmable dual-sensor adaptive optics (ds-AO) system that integrates both zonal and modal wavefront sensing into a single optical setup. The proposed system employs a single liquid-crystal spatial light modulator (LCSLM) and one detector to implement both
sensing approaches, reducing hardware complexity while enabling the correction of complex optical aberrations.

A key feature of the proposed system is its programmable architecture, which allows seamless integration and fusion of the information obtained from both sensing techniques. This provides greater flexibility and resilience compared to conventional adaptive optics systems.

The performance of the proposed ds-AO system was experimentally verified by correcting both holographically and non-holographically introduced aberrations. The results demonstrate its capability to effectively correct optical distortions while maintaining a simplified system architecture.
This work establishes the foundation for next-generation adaptive optics systems with potential applications in free-space optical communication, microscopy, and vision science.