Decomposition of aberrated or turbulent wavefronts into a spatial mode spectrum using optical cavities

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

It is shown that an aberrated wavefront incident upon a Fabry–Perot optical cavity excites higher order spatial modes in the cavity and that the spectral width and distribution of these modes is indicative of the type and magnitude of the aberration. The cavities are purely passive, and therefore frequency content is limited to that provided by the original light source. To illustrate this concept, spatial mode decomposition and transmission spectrum calculation are simulated on an example cavity; the effects of various phase delays, in the form of two basic Seidel aberrations and a composite of Zernike polynomial terms, are shown using both Laguerre–Gaussian and plane wave incident beams. The aggregate spectral width of the cavity modes excited by the aberrations is seen to widen as the magnitude of the aberrations’ phase delay increases.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)4288-4299
Number of pages12
JournalApplied Optics
Volume58
Issue number16
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 1 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Optical Society of America

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Decomposition of aberrated or turbulent wavefronts into a spatial mode spectrum using optical cavities'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this