Closed-loop adaptive optical system with a liquid mirror.

A deformable mirror based on internal reflection from an electrostatically deformable liquid-air interface is proposed and investigated. A differential equation describing the static behavior of such a mirror is analyzed and solved numerically. Stable closed-loop operation of an adaptive optical system with a liquid deformable mirror is demonstrated, including forming and the correction of low-order aberrations described by Zernike polynomials and the real-time correction of dynamically changing aberrations.