Cilas has been selected by two customers to design and manufacture deformable mirrors for high power lasers.
In the UK, the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) has ordered deformable mirrors from Cilas as part of the contract for wavefront sensors and adaptive optics. New monomorph deformable mirrors from the company will be used on the two petawatt class lasers of the Orion project at AWE. The monomorph deformable mirrors (63 actuators, 86mm useful aperture) will be delivered before the end of this year. The monomorph deformable mirrors are being supplied to AWE by BFI Optilas as part of an adaptive optics system for laser beam correction, which has been designed by Imagine Optic.
In France, the Laboratoire d’Utilisation des Lasers Intenses (LULI) a joint unit for research between the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Commissariat à l’Energie atomique (CEA), the Ecole Polytechnique and Paris VI University, has ordered a monomorph mirror from Cilas. With 31 actuators over a 98mm useful aperture, this deformable mirror will upgrade the 100 terawatts class laser at LULI as part of the Elfie Project. Monomorph deformable mirrors especially designed to correct high power laser beams with short pulses (terawatts and petawatts class), complement the wide range of deformable mirrors marketed by Cilas for adaptive optics systems worldwide.
