COHERENT IMAGE SYNTHESIS FROM WAVE-FRONT SENSOR MEASUREMENTS OF A NONIMAGED LASER SPECKLE FIELD - A LABORATORY DEMONSTRATION

We report what are to our knowledge the first coherent images recovered in the laboratory from measurements made with a Shack-Hartmann wave-front sensor of the phase and amplitude of a laser speckle wave front. We discuss the design of our wave-front sensor, which can obtain the phase and amplitude of an optical field with a single intensity measurement, and we point out a particular type of phase jump that cannot be detected by the Shack-Hartmann sensor. We also discuss implementations of this technique that may permit near-diffraction-limited imaging through turbulent media.