Flexible design method for freeform lenses with an arbitrary lens contour.

Abstract

A method is presented that allows the design of freeform lenses with an arbitrary contour in a flexible and robust manner. The method is based on the generation of two equi-flux grids representing the source and target beams, with two separate curl-free mappings from an equi-spatial rectangular grid. Because the source and target grids are generated independently from one another, one can map arbitrary complex source beams with certain contours onto arbitrary complex target beams within other contours with high convergence probability. The method is illustrated by calculating a triangular freeform lens that reshapes a triangular beam from a Lambertian source into a uniform pentagonal irradiance distribution on a target plane.