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Single-shot phase diversity wavefront sensing in deep turbulence via metasurface optics

Nature Photonics (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Free-space optical communication systems offer high-bandwidth, secure communication with minimal capital costs. Adaptive optics are typically added to these systems to decrease atmospheric channel losses; however, the performance of traditional adaptive optics wavefront sensors degrades in long-range, deep-turbulence conditions. Alternative wavefront sensors using phase diversity can successfully reconstruct wavefronts in deep turbulence, but current implementations require bulky setups with high latency. Here we use a nanostructured birefringent metasurface optic that enables low-latency phase diversity wavefront sensing in a compact form factor. We prove the effectiveness of this approach in mid-to-high turbulence (Rytov numbers from 0.2 to 0.6) through simulation and experimental demonstration. In both cases, an average 16-fold increase in signal from the corrected beam is obtained. We also demonstrate benefits such as noise tolerance and complex field reconstruction with high resolution. Our approach opens a pathway for compact, robust wavefront sensing that enhances range and accuracy of free-space optical communication systems.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of wavefront sensing techniques.
Fig. 2: Metasurface design and fabrication.
Fig. 3: Model training pipeline and simulation results.
Fig. 4: Experimental demonstration.

Data availability

The generated datasets used for training and captured simulated and experimental PSFs are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Code availability

The code for data generation is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command (Z.J.C., A.M.J., M.B., J.C. and N.A.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CFD Research Corporation, Huntsville, AL, USA

    Arturo Martin Jimenez, Marc Baltes, Jackson Cornelius & Zachary J. Coppens

  2. US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Huntsville, AL, USA

    Neset Aközbek

Authors
  1. Arturo Martin Jimenez
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  2. Marc Baltes
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  3. Jackson Cornelius
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  4. Neset Aközbek
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  5. Zachary J. Coppens
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Z.J.C. Methodology: Z.J.C., J.C., A.M.J. and M.B. Investigation: A.M.J., M.B. and Z.J.C. Visualization: A.M.J., M.B. and Z.J.C. Funding acquisition: N.A. and Z.J.C. Project administration: N.A. and Z.J.C. Supervision: Z.J.C. and J.C. Writing—original draft: A.M.J., Z.J.C. and M.B. Writing—review and editing: all authors contributed to the final editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zachary J. Coppens.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

CFD Research is working to commercialize metasurface technologies (Z.J.C., A.M.J., M.B. and J.C.). The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Photonics thanks David Brady, Glen Herriot and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–7 and Figs. 1–15.

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Martin Jimenez, A., Baltes, M., Cornelius, J. et al. Single-shot phase diversity wavefront sensing in deep turbulence via metasurface optics. Nat. Photon. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01772-4

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