Demonstration of 17 cm robust carbon fiber deformable mirror for adaptive optics

Carbon-fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite is an attractive material for fabrication of optics due to its high stiffness-to-weight ratio, robustness, zero coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), and the ability to replicate multiple optics from the same mandrel. We use 8 and 17 cm prototype CFRP thin-shell deformable mirrors to show that residual CTE variation may be addressed with mounted actuators for a variety of mirror sizes. We present measurements of surface quality at a range of temperatures characteristic of mountaintop observatories. For the 8 cm piece, the figure error of the Al-coated reflective surface under best actuator correction is ∼43 nm RMS. The 8 cm mirror has a low surface error internal to the outer ring of actuators (17 nm RMS at 20°C and 33 nm RMS at -5°C). Surface roughness is low (< 3 nm P-V) at a variety of temperatures. We present new figure quality measurements of the larger 17 cm mirror, showing that the intra-actuator figure error internal to the outer ring of actuators (38 nm RMS surface with one-third the actuator density of the 8 cm mirror) does not scale sharply with mirror diameter.