Polarization dOTF: on-sky focal plane wavefront sensing

Abstract

The differential Optical Transfer Function (dOTF) is a focal plane wavefront sensing method that uses a diversity in the pupil plane to generate two different focal plane images. The difference of their Fourier transforms recovers the complex amplitude of the pupil down to the spatial scale of the diversity. We produce two simultaneous PSF images with diversity using a polarizing filter at the edge of the telescope pupil, and a polarization camera to simultaneously record the two images. Here we present the first on-sky demonstration of polarization dOTF at the 1.0m South African Astronomical Observatory telescope in Sutherland, and our attempt to validate it with simultaneous Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor images.