For the 8m astronomical telescopes which will see first light in the '90s, interest in adaptive optics correction of the wavefront degraded by atmospheric Wrbulence is very great. A wavefront corrector is described in this paper, in which we present an approach based on liquid crystal material. Some of the properties in favor of using this technique are analyzed, together with some experimental results on a prototype. The great advantage of the liquid crystal approach is that a large number of actuators can be obtained in a 1-2 inch device, at a cost orders of magnitude lower than the conventional mirror-piezoactuator device.

Date Published: 1 November 1990
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 1334, Current Developments in Optical Engineering IV, (1 November 1990); doi: 10.1117/12.22840

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1334:
Current Developments in Optical Engineering IV
Robert E. Fischer; Warren J. Smith, Editor(s)