Modeling and parameter estimation for point-actuated continuous-facesheet deformable mirrors.

We present a variant of the model introduced by Vogel and Yang [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A23, 1074 (2006)] for point-actuated deformable mirrors (DMs) with continuous facesheets, and we describe a robust efficient regularized- output least-squares computational scheme to estimate the parameters in the model, given noisy discrete observations of the DM response to known actuation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach with experimental data obtained from a pair of DMs--a piezo-actuated prototype DM built by CILAS for the Thirty Meter Telescope Project and an electrostatically actuated commercial micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) DM produced by Boston Micromachines Corporation.