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Reimaging telescopes have an accessible exit pupil that facilitates stray light mitigation and matching to auxiliary optical systems. Freeform surfaces present the opportunity for unobscured reflective systems to be folded into geometries that are otherwise impracticable with conventional surface types. It is critical, however, to understand the limitations of the enabled folding geometries and choose the one that best balances the optical performance and mechanical requirements. Here, we used the aberration theory of freeform surfaces to determine the aberration correction potential for using freeform surfaces in reimaging three-mirror telescopes and established a hierarchy for the different folding geometries without using optimization. We found that when using freeform optics, the ideal folding geometry had 9× better wavefront performance compared to the next best geometry. Within that ideal geometry, the system using freeform optics had 39% better wavefront performance compared to a system using off-axis asphere surfaces, thus quantifying one of the advantages of freeform optics in this design space.
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Roadmap for the unobscured three-mirror freeform design space
In rotationally symmetric lens design, there are rule-of-thumb boundaries on field-of-view and aperture for well-known design forms that provide valuable information to the designer prior to starting a design. In the design space of unobscured three-mirror imagers, freeform optics have been shown to provide a significant benefit over conventional surface shapes, but the degree to which they improve the performance for any given combination of field-of-view, entrance pupil diameter, and F-number remains unknown. Thus, designers of these systems are not afforded any pre-design information to inform their specification decisions. Here, we designed over 200 systems to establish a first-of-its-kind roadmap of specification ranges over which an unobscured three-mirror imager using freeform surfaces can achieve diffraction-limited performance in the visible spectrum. The scalability of the findings to the infrared regions of the spectrum is also addressed.
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- PAR ID:
- 10283830
- Publisher / Repository:
- Optical Society of America
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Optics Express
- Volume:
- 29
- Issue:
- 17
- ISSN:
- 1094-4087; OPEXFF
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. 26736
- Size(s):
- Article No. 26736
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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