Adaptive optics (AO) systems often consist of a deformable mirror and an active optics component - usually a fast steering mirror (FSM). Fast steering mirrors are highly accurate opto-electromechanical components mostly based on fast piezo or voice coil drives.
PI designs and manufactures a large number of compact nanopositioning stages and active optics (steering mirror platforms) for astronomy and telescope instrument packages. Units like the S-331 tip/tilt mirror platform can provide very high frequency to 2kHz and above, for example, which is useful in circle generation.
The following graph shows the (simplified) relation between tip/tilt angle and dynamics (mechanical resonant frequency) for different compact fast steering mirror families.
In addition to compact steering mirror platforms, PI offers a number of compact single- and multi-axis piezo nanopositioning stages. Hundreds of standard models from thumbnail sized to shoe-box size are available. In addition, PI has more than 4 decades of experience designing customized piezo stages.
