Nonlinear optical (NLO) imaging platforms traditionally rely on refractive microscope objectives, which suffer from chromatic aberrations and temporal dispersion of pulsed excitation light. These issues degrade spatial imaging properties and signal brightness. Furthermore, the limited transmission range of refractive materials restricts NLO imaging, especially for applications requiring short- to mid-wave infrared excitation. While reflective microscope objectives offer an achromatic solution and broader transmission range (from visible to mid-infrared), conventional Schwarzschild designs have a central obscuration, which limits transmission throughput, imparts diffraction effects into the images, and, more generally, hinders the adoption of reflective optics in NLO microscopy. We overcome these obscuration-based limitations by developing a reflective microscope objective using freeform mirrors in a non-coaxial geometry. This obscuration-free design boasts a 0.65 numerical aperture (NA), near diffraction-limited imaging performance, and offers significantly improved transmission with wider fields-of-view. We demonstrate its utility by integrating it into a standard laser-scanning microscope and performing NLO microscopy across a wide range of excitation wavelengths. Our freeform microscope objective outperforms standard reflective designs, providing an achromatic, dispersion-free alternative to refractive lenses for NLO imaging.
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Telecentric broadband objective lenses for optical coherence tomography (OCT) in the context of low uncertainty metrology of freeform optical components: from design to testing for wavefront and telecentricity
Freeform optical components enable significant advances for optical systems. A major challenge for freeform optics is the current lack of metrology methods with measurement uncertainty on the order of tens of nanometers or less. Towards addressing this challenge, optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a viable technique. In the context of low uncertainty metrology, the design requirements pertaining to the sample arm of an OCT metrology system are explicitly addressed in this paper. Two telecentric, broadband, diffraction limited, custom objective lens designs are presented with their design strategies. One objective lens was fabricated and experimentally tested for wavefront performance and telecentricity. This lens demonstrates near diffraction limited performance and a maximum deviation from telecentricity of 8.7 arcseconds across the full field of view, correlating to measurement uncertainty of less than 12 nm in simulation. The telecentricity test method developed completes the loop with respect to the design requirements and strategies presented and provides further intuition for telecentric lens designs in general. © 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
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- PAR ID:
- 10161247
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Optics express
- Volume:
- 27
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 1094-4087
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 6184-6200
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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