A new method to treat a spherical lens as a combination of two perpendicular lengthless cylindrical lenses in ray tracing

Abstract

We present a new suggest on for treating skew rays. In the new suggestion, we hypothetically divide a spherical lens, at each point of intersection of the incident rays with the spherical lens, into two effective perpendicular lengthless cylindrical lenses. One of the hypothetical cylindrical lenses is effective in the vertical direction while the other is effective in the horizontal direction. A method is given for calculating the resulted vertical and horizontal angles of refraction. After calculating these angles one can combine, at that point of incidence, the two components into a vector sum to find the resultant refracted ray. The new suggested method is first discussed and demonstrated for one single lens, and then generalized to optical systems of many components. The method's power and effectiveness in lens and optical systems design is demonstrated. A software package is designed and written for the purpose of optical ray tracing. The new method is implemented in this software. The name we gave to this package is CALOSD. CALOSD is an acronym for Computer Aided Lens and Optical Systems Design. CALOSD is capable of producing very accurate tabulated data as well as graphical displays of an optical system and rays traced from different points or angles of view; including a top view.