Summary
Diffractive wavefront correction is the technique of increasing the optically quality of a system by compensating for wavefront aberrations using holographic reconstruction. It has applications in a broad range of fields, such as laser uplink correction in adaptive optics, multiphoton fluoresence microscopy, and laser communications. The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of a digital micromirror device (DMD) as a method of wavefront correction. The principles of holographic reconstruction were used to generate an interferogram which, when programmed onto the micromirror array, would induce a focus aberration on diffracted light. By placing a CCD array in the focal plane, the diffracted beam was directly observed. Further corrections of wavefront aberrations reduced the spot size to 2-3 times the diffraction limit as given by the Rayleigh criterion, demonstrating the ability of the DMD to induce specific wavefront aberrations.
