Numerical simulation of Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor to characterize the turbulence phase statistics

Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor (SHWS) is one of the important parts in an adaptive optics system and its detection accuracy has considerable influences on the performances of the whole system. In this paper, a simulator of such type of wavefront sensor is built and tested by measuring the slope structure function of Kolmogorov turbulence simulated by random phase screens. The numerical results show that it works well to characterize the turbulence phase statistics. In combination with the noise simulation, this simulator will be a very useful tool to further investigate and optimize the system parameters to improve the detection accuracy and the performance of the whole system.