Abstract

An overview of the design, construction, and performance testing of a small scale, uncooled, Deformable Mirror (DM) is presented. The design approach was to produce a DM which represents a low cost, high reliability device with small signal bandwidths of greater than 1 kHz, full power bandwidth greater than 100 Hz, and 4 pm of mirror surface motion (stroke). The mirror incorporates 21 actuators arranged in a 5 × 5 square array on 1 cm center-to-center spacings. Each actuator is individually addressable to provide 21 discrete correction subapertures. The mirror is constructed from conventional optical materials in a simple configuration designed to minimize manufacturing and assembly costs. Test data will be presented which indicates that all of the key design goals have been met or surpassed. A scaled version of this DM with similar temporal (stroke and bandwidth) and spatial (actuator spacing and number) characteristics would be suitable for correction of atmospheric turbulence on moderate aperture (2-4 meter) telescopes. Potential applications of this technology include ground based astronomy, ground-based surveillance and tracking, ground to space optical communication, and low power laser beam clean-up.

© 1992 Optical Society of America