Comparison study of the performance of piston, thin plate and membrane mirrors for correction of turbulence-induced phase distortions

In the framework of the Kolmogorov turbulence model and analytical and numerical models of deformable mirrors, we investigated and intercompared the correction performances of piston, membrane and flexible faceplate (with either free edge, supported edge or clamped edge) adaptive mirrors featuring orthogonal, hexagonal and segmented ring actuator structures. It was shown that all modal correctors provide similar correction performance, which is close to the performance of the ideal corrector with Karhunen-Loeve-type influence functions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.