Annular-force-based variable curvature mirror combined with multi-point actuation array to improve the surface figure accuracy: a prototype design

In recent years, a novel optical zooming technique has been paid much attention. With the help of optical leveraging effect, it is possible to alter the system focal length dramatically without moving elements involved in by only changing the curvature radius of VCM (variable curvature mirror) slightly. With no doubt, VCM is the key to realize non-moving element optical zooming and it has to provide large enough saggitus variation while still maintaining the high surface figure accuracy to ensure high quality imaging. In our previously published paper, an annular force based VCM has been designed, fabricated and tested. Experiments demonstrate that with the aperture of 100mm and thickness of 2mm, the VCM could generate a large saggitus variation exceeding 30λ (λ=632.8nm). However, the optical quality degrades very fast and this makes such a VCM unsuitable for optical imaging in visible band. Therefore in this manuscript, a multipoint actuation array, which is composed of totally 49 piezoelectric actuators, is embedded into the annular structure to aim to correct the surface figure distortion caused by large saggitus variation. The new structure model has been designed and numerical simulation indicates that the surface figure distortion could be well corrected as long as the degraded surface figure accuracy is better than 1.8λ (λ=632.8nm) (RMS). Based on this, a new prototype VCM is being fabricated and intermediate results are reported here.