Membrane-Based Deformable Mirrors for High Power Laser Systems

The demonstration of polymer membrane deformable mirrors capable of receiving a high-reflectivity coating and handling high energy laser radiation enables the potential for a new generation of low-cost DMs for directed energy weapons. To achieve high actuator count and high speed, a new structural architecture need to be demonstrated. We propose to develop this architecture to achieve a low-cost DM with high reflectivity and scalable to both a large aperture and a large number of actuators while maintaining a high response speed.