Work

Single-shot hyperspectral wavefront imaging

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Single-shot hyperspectral wavefront sensing is essential for applications like spatio-spectral coupling metrology in high-power laser or fast material dispersion imaging. Under broadband illumination, traditional wavefront sensors assume an achromatic wavefront, which makes them unsuitable. We introduce a hyperspectral wavefront sensing scheme based on the Hartmann wavefront sensing principles, employing a multicore fiber as a Hartmann mask to overcome these limitations. Our system leverages the angular memory effect and limited spectral correlation width of the multicore fiber, encoding wavefront gradients into displacements and the spectral information into uncorrelated speckle patterns. This method retains the simplicity, compactness, and single-shot capability of conventional wavefront sensors, with only a slight increase in computational complexity. It also allows a tunable trade-off between spatial and spectral resolution. We demonstrate its efficacy for recording the hyperspectral wavefront cube from single-pulse acquisitions at the Apollon multi-petawatt laser facility, and for performing multispectral microscopic imaging of dispersive phase objects. The authors introduce a high-resolution and spectrally-resolved optical wavefront sensor based on a multicore fiber. Capturing information in one single shot, this instrument advances ultrafast laser metrology and quantitative dispersion microscopy.

Source: Nature Communications

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-66847-w

Authors: Baptiste Blochet, Nathalie Lebas, Pascal Berto, Dimitrios Papadopoulos, Marc Guillon