RE: ATM Has anyone worked with membrane mirrors?

[astillma@nit.AirTouch.COM (Anthony Stillman)]

John Maxwell wrote:

...need to keep a decent vacuum between the membrane and the substrate, in
order to prevent dielectric breakdown...
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I concure, the e-field is there to tweak the figure not make it, that is 
accomplished by the paressure differential.


Also there seems to be some contention as to the shape resulting from a 
delta-P across an elastic membrane.  As it has been a fair number of years,
I will re-analize this model and present the results in a few days.
I encoourage others to do the same.  For the sake of simplicity I make
the following assumptions.

1) The membrane obays Hooke's law
2) The membrane is mass less
3) The membrane has no thickness

Incidently, I believe that it is the last assumption, or rather the violation
of it, that allows glass on a vacuum chuck to take on the approximate shape
of that needed for a schmidt corrector.

Anthony