Receding-horizon adaptive contyrol of aero-optical wavefronts

A new method for adaptive prediction and correction of wavefront errors in adaptive optics (AO) is introduced. The new method is based on receding-horizon control design and an adaptive lattice filter. Experimental results presented illustrate the capability of the new adaptive controller to predict and correct aero-optical wavefronts derived...

Integrated adaptive optics system for small telescopes

We describe a compact integrated module implementing a low-cost adaptive optics system. It is targeted as a correction system for small telescopes with primary mirror diameter up to 1 m, operating on a natural guide star with magnitude at least 4 (for a 25 cm telescope). It is supposed to provide stable diffraction-limited imaging of stars,...

Multiplexing control of a multichannel piezoelectric deformable mirror

Addressing of massive arrays of piezoelectric actuators is usually achieved by using separate high-voltage output drivers, one per channel. This approach applied to high-order adaptive optics systems results in complex, expensive and vulnerable to handling abuse driver electronics, hardly scalable to 103-104 actuators. To reduce the number of...

Modal wavefront correctors based on nematic liquid crystals

Modal wavefront correctors are active optical components for the compensation of aberrated optical wavefronts in a smooth and continuous way. They are traditionally represented by membrane and continuous faceplate deformable mirrors. This thesis is dedicated to the investigation and development of modal wavefront correctors based on nematic...

Subjective adaptive correction of the aberrations of the human eye

We designed and built an experimental setup for subjective (manually controlled) correction of up to 12 orthogonal terms (excluding tilts and defocus) of the aberration of the human eye. In our experiments, the subject was looking through an adaptive optical system at the USAF resolution chart. By using the arrow keys of the computer keyboard,...

Using 50-mm electrostatic membrane deformable mirror in astronomical adaptive optics

Membrane micro-machined deformable mirrors (MMDM) feature low cost, low power consumption, small size and absence of hysteresis. Interested in using such a device for the adaptive optics system at the SOAR 4.1-m telescope, we evaluated the performance of a 79-channel 50-mm (pupil size 35mm) MMDM from OKO Technologies. The measured influence...

Silicon micro-optics for smart light control

We present an overview of the results of our recent research in the field of adaptive optical components based on silicon microtechnologies, including membrane deformable mirrors, spatial light modulators, liquid-crystal correctors, wavefront sensors, and both spherical and aspherical micro-optical components. We aim at the realization of...

Adaptive mirror micromachined in silicon