An optically addressed, thermally actuated adaptive optical system

We present an extremely robust adaptive optical system designed for high power applications such as intra-cavity aberration correction. The reflective system is thermally actuated, using an optical addressing scheme. The active element is unpixelated and consists of a sandwich of material layers that is designed to optimally absorb the impinging addressing light and convert it to the desired surface shape. The addressing light distribution is created using the light of a two axis collimated diode bar that is shaped with the help of a DMD (digital micro mirror device). This allows a very flexible control of the adaptive optical system. We will give details on the setup of the system and show experimental results on the obtainable wave front corrections.