CILAS NEW Developments in Adaptive Optics

11 Jun 2015

CILAS has been a pioneer in deformable mirrors (DMs) and adaptive optics (AO). CILAS DMs have been in operation for more than 20 years on telescope AO systems such as:

• COME-ON the first European AO project,
• the Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System for ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT),
• GEMS the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics for Gemini South Observatory,
• SPHERE the “Planet Finder” instrument for ESO,
• Gran Telescopio Canarias and Subaru Telescope,
• Gregor Solar Telescope and Swedish Solar Telescope (SST)…

and on high power laser chains:

• Orion laser facility at AWE,
• 100 TW ELFIE laser at Laboratoire d'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses (LULI)
• Ultrafast intense laser facility at Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée (LOA),
• Sapphire Laser Draco at HZDR…

CILAS has made significant developments to upgrade its two DM technologies: piezo-stack (SAM) and Monomorph (MONO).

For the last two years and thanks to the partnership with ESO and TMT, the reliability of Stack Array Mirrors has improved featuring the latest generation of actuators. SAMs are custom DMs, they can be equipped with up to several thousands of actuators. They provide high order corrections with large inter-actuator stroke.

Key features of stack DMs:

- A very high bandwidth

- Low non-linearity (<5%)

- A high optical quality

- A very low dependence to temperature and environment.

Thanks to new fabrication process, the reliability of the actuators is improved:

- Breakdown voltage demonstrating 10 times the maximum operational voltage

- 20 billion cycles without failure (15 years of operation at 1/3 of full stroke)

- Accelerated ageing tests showing long life under operational environment

Stack DMs are well-adapted for high order deformable mirrors required on future extremely large telescopes.

The Monomorph mirrors combine simplicity and reliability to correct wavefront deformation. Current developments will allow CILAS to propose mirrors for the future large-scale laser installations, with three main improvements: dielectric coatings, larger useful pupil (up to 250 mm) and correction stability.

Besides, CILAS is still developing a deformable mirror with Airbus & CNES for OTOS which prepares the next generation of high-resolution satellite of Earth observation. Once qualified the mirror could reach a TRL6 maturity level, with needed reliability and resistance.

MONOs features:

- Catalog or custom DMs for astronomy (low order correction - small telescopes) lasers, and space application

- No print-through effect

- Optical surface quality better than 10 nm RMS WFE

- High reliability (300 Mcycles tested on space prototype)

- Large bandwidth (130 Hz bandwidth for 2 kHz sampling frequency on SST telescope)

- High correction stroke up to +/-50 μm PTV wavefront (larger strokes upon request)

Meet CILAS at Laser World of Photonics Munich - Hall B2 Booth #267

Or for more info click here