Push-pull membrane mirrors for adaptive optics

We propose an improvement to the electrostatic membrane deformable mirror technique introducing push-pull capability that increases the performance in the correction of optical aberrations. The push-pull effect is achieved by the addition of some transparent electrodes on the top of the device. The transparent electrode is an indium-tin-oxide coated glass. The improvement of the mirror in generating surfaces is demonstrated by the comparison with a pull membrane mirror. The control is carried out in open loop by the knowledge of the response of each single electrode. An effective iterative strategy for the clipping management is presented. The performances are evaluated both in terms of Zernike polynomials generation and in terms of aberrations compensation based on the statistics of human eyes. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.