Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Nie, Yunfeng
• Shafer, David R.
• Ottevaere, Heidi
• Thienpont, Hugo
• Duerr, Fabian

Titel

Automated freeform imaging system design with generalized ray tracing and simultaneous multi-surface analytic calculation

Ist Teil von

• Optics express, 2021-05, Vol.29 (11), p.17227-17245

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Recently, freeform optics has been widely used due to its unprecedented compactness and high performance, especially in the reflective designs for broad-wavelength imaging applications. Here, we present a generalized differentiable ray tracing approach suitable for most optical surfaces. The established automated freeform design framework simultaneously calculates multi-surface coefficients with merely the system geometry known, very fast for generating abundant feasible starting points. In addition, we provide a “double-pass surface” strategy with desired overlap (not mutually centered) that enables a component reduction for very compact yet high-performing designs. The effectiveness of the method is firstly demonstrated by designing a wide field-of-view, fast f-number, four-mirror freeform telescope. Another example shows a two-freeform, three-mirror, four-reflection design with high compactness and cost-friendly considerations with a double-pass spherical mirror. The present work provides a robust design scheme for reflective freeform imaging systems in general, and it unlocks a series of new ‘double-pass surface’ designs for very compact, high-performing freeform imaging systems.