Experimental Analysis of Diffraction Effects from a Segmented MEMS Deformable Mirror for a Closed Loop Adaptive Optics System

Abstract

Micro-Electro-Machined Systems (MEMS) have been increasingly used as mirrors in place of conventional continuous face sheet deformable mirrors (DM) in adaptive optics (AO) systems. Here we study the diffraction effects introduced into the optical path when a segmented MEMS DM is used to correct for the wavefront aberrations. Diffraction effects are monitored through the intermediate focus plane prior to the wavefront sensor. Low pass spatial filter is used at the plane in order to investigate how the making of various diffraction orders affects the phase. Measured phase and focal image plane data for various turbulence conditions are presented and analyzed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA531999

Entities

People

  • Carylon Tewksbury-christle
  • Darryl J. Sanchez
  • Denis W. Oesch
  • Julie Smith
  • Katia Shtyrkova
  • Loretta Arguello
  • Patrick C. Kelly

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Adaptive Optics
  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Atmospheric Motion
  • Deformable Mirrors
  • Detectors
  • Diffraction
  • Electric Fields
  • Focal Planes
  • Gratings (Spectra)
  • Low Pass Filters
  • Microelectromechanical Systems
  • Military Research
  • Optics
  • Three Dimensional
  • Turbulence
  • Wavefronts

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Optical Physics and Photonics.