A new silicon deformable mirror design is presented which provides high reflectivity, an optical quality continuous surface, and high intensity handling capacity. Its features make it useful for a wide range of devices including telescopes, leasers, and photolithographic systems. The mirror architecture is similar to commercial electrostrictive deformable mirrors. A focus corrector built using this architecture exhibited 2.25 microns of actuation at the center through the application of 100v corresponding to a radius of curvature of -2.4m. A 30 micrometers thick 1cm diameter silicon mirrors exhibited its first mechanical resonance at 2.7kHz. A mirror coated with 100nm of gold was shown to be able to withstand 100kW/cm 2 of continuous wave 1064nm intensity for 10 minutes without observable degradation. An active mode-matching experiment was performed showing that 99.5 percent of a Nd:YAG beam could be coupled to a finesse 4000 ring cavity.

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Micromachined Silicon Deformable Mirror

The history of adaptive optics is outlined from the concepts of 25 years ago to the many forms in which it is being applied today. Several independent paths of development are traced, leading to the emergence of a new technology that combines the disciplines of optics and electronics. Speculations are made on possible directions for the future.© (1978) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Historical Review Of Adaptive Optics Technology

We shall describe a portion of our experimental program on laser induced air breakdown. The purpose of our experiments is to measure the effect of particles in the focal volume of the laser beam on the breakdown threshold and to investigate the nature of the initiation process and the growth mechanisms of the plasma. Although we are interested primarily in particle induced breakdown we have done some experiments in clean air and on a carbon surface.

Louis C. Marquet

Papers

Historical Review Of Adaptive Optics Technology

Influence of Particles on Laser Induced Air Breakdown