Sub aperture polishing of Fused Silica asphere for deterministic control of form and texture

Abstract

Aspheric lenses are the lenses, which have varying radius of curvature according to distance from the optical axis. Optical designer can do excellent aberration correction using an aspheric lens, which provides superior resolution, even with compact optics composed of a small number of elements. We report fabrication of an aspheric lens in Fused Silica using sub aperture polishing technique because traditional full aperture polishing technique is not suitable for aspheric lenses. The linear feed rate has been optimized to produce optical quality surface finish using less number of iterations. Stylus profilometer and optical profilometer has been used for aspheric surface characterization. Keywords— Aspheric Optics, Sub aperture polishing, Optical fabrication.