Adaptive optics
lastmod 2025-03-12created 2025-03-121 edits
Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology that improves the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of rapidly changing optical distortion. Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortion of the wavefront and compensating for it with a spatial phase modulator such as a deformable mirror or a liquid crystal array. Adaptive optics was first proposed by Horace W. Babcock in 1953, but it came into practical use only in the 1990s, when computer technology had advanced. Adaptive optics is distinguished from active optics. Active optics works over longer timescales to correct the shape of the primary mirror. The simplest form of adaptive optics is 'tip-tilt' (tipping and tilting) correction, which corresponds to the tilt of the wavefront in the plane. In this case, a fast-moving tip-tilt mirror rotates in small circles around two axes, and in this way most of the aberration caused by the atmosphere is eliminated.
See also
- Korean: 대기 보정 (Atmospheric correction)
- Active optics
- Apparent diameter
- Holography
- Image stabilization
- Nonlinear optics
- Wavefront (physics)