Mounting with compliant cylinders for deformable mirrors

A method is presented to mount large aperture unimorph deformable mirrors by compliant cylinders (CC). The CCs are manufactured from a soft silicone, and shear testing is performed in order to evaluate the Young's modulus. A scale mirror model is assembled to evaluate mount-induced change of piezoelectric deformation, and its applicability for tightly focusing mirrors. Experiments do not show any decrease of piezoelectric stroke. Further it is shown that the changes of surface fidelity by the attachment of the deformable mirror to its mount are neglectable.