Measurement and statistical analysis of the wavefront distortions induced by atmospheric turbulence using two-channel moire deflectometry

Recently, an adjustable, high-sensitivity, wide dynamic range, two-channel wavefront sensor based on moire deflectometry was proposed by Rasouli et al (2010 Opt. Express 18 23906). In this work we have used this sensor on a telescope for measuring turbulence-induced wavefront distortions. A slightly divergent laser beam passes through turbulent ground level atmosphere and enters the telescope's aperture. The laser beam is collimated behind the telescope's focal point by means of a collimator and the beam enters the wavefront sensor. First, from deviations in the moire fringes we calculate the two orthogonal components of the angle of arrival at each location across the wavefront. The deviations have been deduced in successive frames which allows evolution of the wavefront shape and Fried's seeing parameter r(0) to be determined. Mainly, statistical analysis of the reconstructed wavefront distortions are presented. The achieved accuracy in the measurements and comparison between the measurements and the theoretical models are presented. Owing to the use of the sensor on a telescope, and using sub-pixel accuracy for the measurement of the moire fringe displacements, the sensitivity of the measurements is improved by more than one order of magnitude. In this work we have achieved a minimum measurable angle of arrival fluctuations equal to 3.7 x 10(-7) rad or 0.07 arc s. Besides, because of the large area of the telescope's aperture, a high spatial resolution is achieved in detecting the spatial perturbations of the atmospheric turbulence.