Quickly changing and scattering media like atmospheric turbulence, biological tissue, and fog pose a challenge for high-performance imaging and communication systems, since these media scramble spatial information present in incoming and outgoing light. This can lead to multiple drawbacks. In applications which require imaging and focusing light through atmospheric turbulence, like astronomy and free space optical communications, the turbulence causes light to disperse and not properly focus on photodetectors and camera arrays, reducing system performance dramatically. Additionally, in microscopic applications, sample densities can change, inducing aberrations which lower the resolution of imaging systems. To fix these problems, Adaptive Optics (AO) systems are commonly used to remove related aberrations. Additionally, AO systems can “pre-compensate” light to focus through biological tissue or through many kilometers of quickly-changing atmospheric turbulence.

This research track seeks to improve the performance, versatility, and accessibility of adaptive optics systems by using high-resolution spatial light modulators in combination with novel computational wavefront estimation methods, to correct and project beams.