Correction of low order aberrations using continuous deformable mirrors

Adaptive optic correction using microelectromechanical deformable mirrors

Mark N. Horenstein Boston University Electrical and Computer Engineering Boston, Massachusetts 02215 Abstract. A micromachined deformable mirror (m-DM) for optical wavefront correction is described. Design and manufacturing approaches for m-DMs are detailed. The m-DM employs a flexible silicon membrane supported by mechanical attachments to an array of electrostatic parallel plate actuators. De...

Performance of a thermally deformable mirror for correction of low-order aberrations in laser beams.

The thermally deformable mirror is a device aiming at correcting beam-wavefront distortions for applications where classical mechanical methods are precluded by noise considerations, as in advanced gravitational wave interferometric detectors. This moderately low-cost technology can be easily implemented and controlled thanks to the good reproducibility of the actuation. By using a flexible pri...

Suppressing low-order eigenmodes with local control for deformable mirrors

Wave-front correction of femtosecond terawatt lasers by deformable mirrors.

Wave-front correction and focal spot improvement of femtosecond laser beams have been achieved, for the first time to our knowledge, with a deformable mirror with an on-line single-shot three-wave lateral shearing interferometer diagnostic. Wave-front distortions of a 100-fs laser that are due to third-order nonlinear effects have been compensated for. This technique, which permits correction i...

Ultralightweight deformable mirrors.

This paper presents a concept for ultralightweight deformable mirrors, based on a thin substrate of optical surface quality, coated with continuous active layers that provide separate modes of actuation at different length scales. This concept eliminates any kind of stiff backing structure for the mirror surface and exploits microfabrication technologies to provide tight integration of the acti...