Automatic generation method for long-focal-length unobscured freeform optical systems with small volume

Abstract

The existing design methods for long-focal-length unobscured freeform systems rarely consider the imaging quality requirements and volume constraints simultaneously, causing most of the final designs to not fulfill the requirement of light weight. This study proposes a method to automatically design a long-focal-length unobscured reflective system that satisfies volume constraints while maintaining high imaging quality. First, a method to adaptively set the structural parameter range is proposed, and multiple parameters for different systemic specifications can be effectively calculated within it. Subsequently, the systemic volume and area functions are constructed using the ray tracing method, where the tilt angles, distances between mirrors, and radii of curvature of the mirrors are chosen as the optimization parameters. Third, a comprehensive objective function is jointly established combining ray obscuration and convergence as performance evaluation factors. Then, the structural parameters of a long-focal-length unobscured system with small volume are easily obtained via the simulated annealing method. Finally, the improved W-W method is used to further enhance the imaging quality of the system, and an unobscured freeform reflective optical system with three mirrors is automatically generated. Experimental results demonstrate that our method can automatically calculate the parameter ranges to facilitate the search for structural parameters, and effectively design the long-focal-length unobscured freeform systems with small volume and high imaging quality.