Conformal dome aberration correction based on the integrated design of inner surface and fixed corrector

Abstract

The ellipsoidal conformal dome is commonly used at present, which is a balanced choice between the aero-dynamic performance and optical imaging performance of the optical dome. The paraboloidal dome has superior aerodynamic performance, but the dynamic aberration correction is far more difficult than that of the ellipsoidal dome which has also become a bottleneck restricting on its application. This paper proposed a dynamic aberration correction method based on integrated design of inner surface and fixed corrector, for which realized the design of the dynamic aberration correction of the paraboloidal dome. Based on the analysis of the Zernike aberration characteristics of the paraboloidal dome, we focused on controlling of the Zernike aberration coefficients Z4, Z5, Z8 and Z9 to execute the dynamic aberration correction of the inner surface. Then, after deriving the Wassermann-Wolf equation (W-W equation) of the paraboloidal conformal dome, the initial surface shape of the fixed corrector was numerically solved combining with the ray tracing method, and the following dynamic aberration correction of the fixed corrector was carried out. Finally, with a specific design example of mid-wave infrared optical system with the paraboloidal dome, the dynamic aberration correction method for the paraboloidal conformal dome optical system was verified. These results show that the design method is feasible to solve the dynamic aberration correction difficulties of the paraboloidal dome, and is of great significance to promote the applications of the paraboloidal conformal dome.