Design of two-dimensional reflective imaging systems: an approach based on inverse methods

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Abstract

Imaging systems are inherently prone to aberrations. We present an optimization method to design two-dimensional (2D) freeform reflectors that minimize aberrations for various parallel ray beams incident on the optical system. We iteratively design reflectors using inverse methods from non-imaging optics and optimize them to obtain a system that produces minimal aberrations. This is done by minimizing a merit function that quantifies aberrations and is dependent on the energy distributions at the source and target of an optical system, which are input parameters essential for inverse freeform design. The proposed method is tested for two configurations: a single-reflector system and a double-reflector system. Classical designs consisting of aspheric elements are well-known for their ability to minimize aberrations. We compare the performance of our freeform optical elements with classical designs. The optimized freeform designs outperform the classical designs in both configurations.

Original languageEnglish
Article number25
Number of pages21
JournalJournal of Mathematics in Industry
Volume14
Issue number1
Early online date8 Nov 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Keywords

  • Aberrations
  • Freeform design
  • Illumination optics
  • Imaging optics
  • Inverse methods
  • Nelder-Mead optimization

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