A high-speed, wavelength invariant, single-pixel wavefront sensor with a digital micromirror device

Abstract: The wavefront measurement of a light beam is a complex task, which often requires a series of spatially resolved intensity measurements. For instance, a detector array may be used to measure the local phase gradient in the transverse plane of the unknown laser beam. In most cases the resolution of the reconstructed wavefront is determined by the resolution of the detector, which in the infrared case is severely limited. Here we employ a Digital Micro-mirror Device (DMD) and a single-pixel detector (i.e. with no spatial resolution) to demonstrate the reconstruction of unknown wavefronts with excellent resolution. Our approach exploits modal decomposition of the incoming field by the DMD, enabling wavefront measurements at 4~kHz of both visible and infrared laser beams.