Software compensation method for achieving high stability of Alpao deformable mirrors

Area of Science:

• Optical Engineering
• Adaptive Optics Systems

Background:

• Deformable mirrors (DMs) are crucial for correcting optical aberrations in adaptive optics.
• Maintaining DM surface stability without optical feedback is essential for reliable performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and generalize software compensation methods for DM surface instability.
• To quantify the effectiveness of compensation for creep and thermal effects.

Main Methods:

• Developed a generalized software compensation method for DM surface creep.
• Investigated and compensated for DM shape dependence on recent steering commands (thermal effects).
• Compensation methods rely solely on pre-calibration data, without optical feedback.

Main Results:

• The generalized creep compensation corrects 90%-95% of observed creep.
• The thermal effect compensation corrects approximately 90% of the observed shape dependence.
• Alpao DMs demonstrate excellent stability after applying both compensation mechanisms.

Conclusions:

• Software-based compensation effectively addresses DM surface instabilities.
• The compensated DMs are suitable for feed-forward adaptive optics applications requiring high reliability.