Water-cooled stacked-actuator deformable mirror for atmospheric applications

High-power laser systems are widely used for technological purposes or laser fusion experiments, but also to deliver the energy to some remote places here on the Earth as well as in space. Probably the only instrument to improve the phase structure of the laser beam is to use methods and elements of adaptive optics. The heart of any adaptive optical system is of course the deformable mirror. That is why the research and development of such optical elements continues for many years already. Here we propose a new stacked actuator mirror to be used to correct for not just the turbulent phase fluctuations, but also it should work with high CW power laser beams. Therefore, our mirror is a water-cooled one. Another important feature of this device is that each actuator could be easily substituted in case of failure. The mirror is 120 mm in diameter and has 121 control elements. Main characteristics of a mirror are presented in this work.