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Amazing! How can we break the limitation of atmospheric disturbance by changing the shape of the deformable mirror?
In today's optical technology field, deformable mirrors (DM) are developing rapidly. This mirror, which can change its surface shape at will, makes it possible to control the light wavefront and correct optical aberrations. As the demand for imaging and measurement accuracy continues to rise, the application range of deformable mirrors is also expanding. From adaptive optics systems to wavefront error compensation in high-speed airflow, it has become the basis of many advanced technologies.
Deformable mirrors have many degrees of freedom and can adjust and correct multiple wavefronts, which is crucial to improving imaging quality.
The design of a deformable mirror involves various parameters that directly affect its performance. First, the number of actuators of the mirror determines the degrees of freedom in which the wavefront shape can be modified. Typically, for dynamic optical systems, the shape of the deformable mirror must change faster than the process that requires correction. This is because even static aberrations require multiple iterations to achieve the desired effect.
In strong airflow fluctuations, parameters such as the number, spacing and stroke of the actuators determine the maximum wavefront gradient that can be compensated.
Under the influence of atmospheric disturbances, the correction of low-order Zernike polynomials usually significantly improves the imaging quality, while further correction of high-order terms can bring limited improvement. It can be seen that for the design of deformable mirrors, how to improve its correction capability while ensuring cost-effectiveness is an important engineering challenge.
Concept of deformable mirror
There are different design concepts for deformable mirrors, the most common ones include segmented mirrors, continuous panel mirrors, and MEMS mirrors. Segmented mirrors are made up of individual flat lenses, each of which is able to move relatively small amounts. The advantage of this concept is that there is almost no cross-influence between each actuator, which improves the imaging quality. However, the disadvantage is that the seams between the lenses can easily cause light scattering, limiting the applicable scenarios.
The continuous panel mirror is a thin film structure, and the shape of the mirror is controlled by an actuator on the back. This design gives the deformable mirror thousands of degrees of freedom, allowing for smoother wavefront control. Advances in materials science have led to significant improvements in the optical quality and performance of these mirrors.
Future large space telescopes, such as NASA's Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Survey Satellite, will employ these advanced segmented mirror designs.
The application of MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) technology has greatly reduced the manufacturing cost of deformable mirrors, which can break the previous high price limit for adaptive optical systems. Its fast response and limited hysteresis make this mirror an important choice in the industry.
Challenges and prospects of new technologies
While deformable mirror technology continues to improve, they still face a number of challenges. From nonlinear effects such as hysteresis and creep, to optimizing designs to reduce materials and cost, engineers have to make a difficult balance between performance and development cost. Especially in high-speed and high-precision application scenarios, how to ensure the response time and accuracy of the mirror will directly affect the performance of the overall system.
How to further improve the performance of deformable mirrors to cope with ever-changing challenges will be an important direction for future technological development.
In the future, with the advancement of materials science and manufacturing technology, deformable mirrors will find applications in a variety of fields such as aerospace, medical imaging and quantum computing. Scientists are also exploring new design concepts, such as ferrofluid deformable mirrors, which could provide new ideas for controlling the light wavefront due to their response to external magnetic fields.
Have you ever thought about whether we can achieve more accurate cosmic observations and clearer optical imaging through these high-tech deformable mirror technologies in the future?
