Characterization and closed-loop performance of a liquid mirror adaptive optical system

A deformable mirror based on the principle of total internal reflection of light from an electrostatically deformed liquid-air interface was realized and used to perform closed-loop adaptive optical (AO) correction on a collimated laser beam aberrated by a rotating phase disk. Equations describing the resonant and oscillatory behavior of the liquid system were obtained and applied to the system under consideration. Characterization of the mirror included open- and closed-loop frequency responses, determination of rise times, the damping times of the liquid, and the influence of liquid surface motion in the absence of external optical aberrations. The performance of the AO system was determined for static and dynamic aberrations for various sets of system parameters. The predictions of the general expressions were compared to the results of the experimental realization and were found to be in good agreement.