Quadratic cost functional for wave-front reconstruction

A quadratic cost functional for reconstruction of a high-resolution wave front from a coarse wave front is presented. The functional uses as data the position and the direction of the coarse wave front that had previously been computed with a ray-tracing method. This functional uses an optical relationship between the ray information and the wave front's shape to reconstruct a high-density wave front. The performance of the proposed functional is illustrated by reconstruction of complicated wave fronts for which this functional has an accuracy that is superior to that of conventional interpolation methods. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.