Demonstration of extended capture range for James Webb Space Telescope phase retrieval.

A geometrical phase retrieval (GPR) algorithm is applied to the problem of image stacking in order to extend the capture range of normal phase retrieval (PR) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and potentially eliminate a lengthy image-stacking process that is based on centroids. Computer simulations are used to establish the capture range of the existing PR algorithm for JWST and demonstrate that it is increased by more than a factor of 10 when combined with GPR, guaranteeing PR capture 95% of the time. An experiment using a scale optical model of JWST was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the GPR algorithm in both coherent and incoherent imaging.