Abstract: This paper presents a novel deformable mirror driven by a laser.The mirror is composed a 2mm-thick polymeric membrane mirror supported by a 6mm-thick grid of patterned photoresist and a photoconductive GaAs substrate.A very high-frequency AC bias is applied between the membrane and the photoconductive substrate.When the back of the device is illuminated by a laser,the carrier concentration in the GaAs increases.This causes an impedance redistribution between two cascaded impedances,and then the membrane is deformed because of the static electric effect.The working model of the mirror is analyzed,and the design and fabrication of the mirror are also presented.The effects of some operating parameters such as bias voltage and current frequency on the membrane deformation are tested by experiment.

Key words: adaptive optics, deformable mirror, optically driven, optical characterization