Liquid deformable mirror for advanced sub-optical system testing

The new giant telescopes can be compared to space projects. They will require ground-based test support equipment to fully characterize the optical sub-system functionalities and performances before costly commissioning on the telescope. The support equipment must be designed to reproduce the telescope or the front optical system's aberrated wavefront. We show that the aberrated wavefront can be generated at low cost by a magnetic liquid deformable mirror. A prototype 91- actuator liquid deformable mirror having a diameter of 33 mm was built and used to simulate the off-axis aberrated CFHT's primary mirror up to 0.5 degrees FOV.