The electrical and optical properties of liquid devices for adaptive optics

Abstract

The use of adaptive optics (AO) for wavefront compensation other than for atmospheric turbulence is an emerging, exciting field. The required system specifications will obviously be dependent on the particular application, and indeed may not be well-characterized for many of the potential uses. Liquid crystal spatial light modulators (LC-SLMs) are also an emerging technology within the field of AO. With this in mind we present here a summary of the specifications of both currently available and predicted LC-SLMs which may be used as wavefront correctors, and discuss how they may be particularly suited for use in non-astronomical AO systems.