Design of partially optically stable reflector systems and prisms

Abstract

The characteristics and design method of the total optically stable (TOS) reflector systems/prisms were introduced in an early paper (Tsai and Lin in Appl. Opt. 47:4158–4163, 2008), where only two types of TOS reflector system exist, namely preservation or retroreflection. In this paper, we introduce the partially optically stable (POS) reflector system, which is only optically stable about a specific directional vector; nevertheless, the exiting light ray is not restricted to preservation or retroreflection. The proposed paper also presents an analytic method for the design of POS reflector systems comprised of multiple reflectors. Furthermore, it is shown that a POS prism can be obtained by adding two refracting flat boundary surfaces with specific conditions at the entrance and exit positions of the light ray in an optical system with multiple reflectors.