A prototype experiment of the adaptive deformable mirror based on voice coil and Eddy Current Sensor

Abstract

Large adaptive deformable mirror is becoming a trend for ground base telescope, at present almost all the large adaptive deformable mirrors in use are driven by voice coil, simultaneously the capacitive sensor is used as a feedback component. While the Eddy Current Sensor could have a lot of advantages over the capacitive one in large deformable mirror. In this research a prototype of 150mm deformable mirror is built, which is driven by 7 voice coil actuators, the ECSs are used in this prototype instead of capacitive ones. In the prototype experiment some standard low-order aberrations applied on the mirror could be corrected as expected, so it could be proved that the ECS could be used in large adaptive deformable mirror to take place of the capacitive one.