Fabrication and testing of large steering mirrors for a scanning lidar

Large. inexpensive scanning mirrors for a lidar have been designed and built out of common float glass mirrors and aluminum honeycomb.The flatness of the scanning mirrors has been characterized with a modified Foucault knife-edge test.The peak-to-peak surface slope error over the entire surface of the mirrors was found to be less than 1 mrad, with slope errors of 0.15 mrad over small areas. This performance was sufficient for use of the mirrors in a scanning CO(2) lidar system that uses direct detection.