Cooled bimorph adaptive mirrors for laser optics

Simulation of a Flexible Mirror Performance in the Problem of Adaptive Compensation for Aberrations in an Optical System

“…As it is seen from the graph for mirrors with large number of actuators the residual error is less than 5 / λ . This value is acceptable and corresponds to mean differences registered at approximation of phase profiles by authors of [4,5], and [15]. On the whole the results presented in this paper allow one to conclude that large-diameter mirrors with more than a hundred actuators insure efficient correction for aberrations in the initial field of a laser beam.…”

“…Adaptive mirrors are intrinsic elements of many modern optical systems [1][2][3]. For example, they are used to compensate aberrations of beams in optical channels or to optimize a laser output power [2,3].…”

“…Application of mirrors requires preliminary assessment of the system performance with account of limitations induced by the device. Namely, there is always exist some deviation of the reflecting surface from the reproduced phase profile value of which depends on the positions of drivers as well as on their number [4,5].…”

“…We simulated mirrors with radii much greater than the radius of the beam and with number of drivers varying in the interval from 100 to 1000. Models of such mirrors were described previously [4,5,9] but only with small (less that 100) number of actuators.…”