Focal-plane irradiance tailoring using the concept of Woofer-Tweeter deformable mirrors

Deformable mirror (DM) is a common-used active freeform optical element. We introduce the concept of Woofer-Tweeter DM system for controlling focal-plane irradiance profiles. We firstly determine a freeform reflective surface for transforming a given incident laser beam into the desired focal-plane irradiance distribution by numerically solving a standard Monge-Ampère equation. Then, we use a low-bandwidth Woofer DM to approximate the required freeform reflective surface and a high-bandwidth Tweeter DM to compensate the residual error. Simulation results show that, compared with single DMs, the Woofer-Tweeter DM system brings the best focal-plane irradiance performances.