PhaseNet: A Deep Learning Based Phase Reconstruction Method for Ground-Based Astronomy

Ground-based astronomy utilizes modern telescopes to obtain information on the universe by analyzing recorded signals. Due to atmospheric turbulence, the reconstruction process requires solving a deconvolution problem with an unknown point spread function (PSF). The crucial step in PSF estimation is to obtain a high-resolution phase from low-resolution phase gradients, which is a challenging problem. In this paper, when multiple frames of low-resolution phase gradients are available, we introduce PhaseNet, a deep learning approach based on the Taylor frozen flow hypothesis. Our approach incorporates a data-driven residual regularization term, of which the gradient is parameterized by a network, into the Laplacian regularization based model. To solve the model, we unroll the Nesterov accelerated gradient algorithm so that the network can be efficiently and effectively trained. Finally, we evaluate the performance of PhaseNet under various atmospheric conditions and demonstrate its superiority over TV and Laplacian regularization based methods.