journal article·2026-02-19Open access

Strategy-Enhanced Differential Evolution for Suppressing Wide-Range Angular Measurement Errors in Differential Wavefront Sensing

Yang Li, Changkang Fu, Hongming Zhang, Hongyang Guo, Ligan Luo, Zhiqiang Zhao, Mengyang Zhao, Ruihong Gao, Qiang Wang, Chen Wang, Caiwen Ma, Dong He, Yongmei Huang

Applied Sciences· Volume 16· Issue 4

Abstract

Differential wavefront sensing (DWS) is widely adopted for high-precision angular detection in interferometric systems, yet its measurement range is constrained by the nonlinear implicit phase–angle relationship. This paper proposes a strategy-enhanced differential evolution algorithm, termed Bi-inheritance and Tournament-Selection-based Differential Evolution (BiTsDE), to suppress nonlinear angular errors. The method introduces fitness-guided inheritance of mutation and crossover factors and tournament-based elite parent selection, enabling adaptive balance between global exploration and local exploitation. Unlike conventional DE variants that mainly tune control parameters, BiTsDE optimizes the evolutionary search strategy, enhancing early-stage diversity and late-stage convergence stability. Simulations demonstrate angular resolution better than 0.06 nrad within ±1 mrad. Experiments show that up to 600 μrad, BiTsDE reduces demodulation error by 99.9% compared with linear DWS, achieving 17.9 nrad precision and 42% faster convergence. These results validate BiTsDE as an effective solution for nonlinear error suppression in DWS-based high-precision optical metrology, particularly for space-based gravitational wave detection.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing · Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research · Advanced Measurement and Metrology Techniques

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

State Key Laboratory of Optical Field Manipulation Science and Technology, Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610209, China

School of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No. 2006 Xiyuan Ave., West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu 611731, China

School of Fundamental Physics and Mathematical Sciences, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Hangzhou 310024, China

National Microgravity Laboratory, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an 710119, China

Key Laboratory of Space Precision Measurement Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an 710119, China

Funding

National Key Research and Development Program of China

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