Electrostatic micromirrors for subaperturing in an adaptive optics system

An electrostatic digital mirror device has been used to replace the lenslet array in a simple adaptive optics system. Clusters of binary pixels define the subapertures of the image plane and direct a small portion of the image onto a detector. The detector measures position shifts in the focused subaperture image caused by optical aberrations. Measurements on a digital mirror-based system and a similar lenslet-based system compare favorably to within a simple scaling factor. A subaperture system designed around a digital mirror device could aid in the development of a sequential subaperturing method that would replace the more complex schemes used in traditional adaptive optics.