Abstract

A fast steering mirror actuated with electromagnetic voice coils has been designed and built, shown in Figure 1. The mirror diameter is 100 mm, and made with 19 mm thick fused silica. Since only 1 milliradian angular deflections are required in typical astronomical applications, the mirror is held in place with a stiff, two-dimensional flexural pivot. Voice coil actuators are arranged in push-pull pairs about two orthogonal axes, resulting in a high torque against the mirror, but negligible piston excitation. To further control the system performance, a reaction mass inside the optical head cancels most of the external vibration.

© 1996 Optical Society of America