Application of laser tracker technology for measuring optical surfaces

Abstract

The pages of this dissertation detail the development of an advanced metrology instrument for measuring large optical surfaces. The system is designed to accurately guide the fabrication of the Giant Magellan Telescope and future telescopes through loose-abrasive grinding. The instrument couples a commercial laser tracker with an advanced calibration technique and a set of external references to mitigate a number of error sources. The system is also required to work as a verification test for the GMT principal optical interferometric test of the polished mirror segment to corroborate the measurements in several low-order aberrations. A set of system performance goals were developed to ensure that the system will achieve these purposes. The design, analysis, calibration results, and measurement performance of the Laser Tracker Plus system are presented in this dissertation.