Closed-loop adaptive optics with a single Spatial Light Modulator

Adaptive optics (AO) are used to improve the quality of optical images by actively compensating for the aberations induced by turbid media. In practice, AO setups are composed of two separate and well defined units. The first one is the wavefront sensor, which aims at the real-time measurement of the wavefront phase distribution. The second unit is devoted to the compensation of optical aberrations by adding the convenient phase retardation to the incoming wavefront. From the experimental point of view, Nowadays, Shack-Hartmann (SH) and pyramidal sensors are being extensively used for the first task, whereas Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs) and deformable mirrors are tipically used to perform the active correction. In this contribution we propose a setup in which both the wavefront sensor and the correction unit can be implemented simultaneously in a single SLM.