Abstract

When the performance of an optical system is evaluated by tracing rays from a point source through the system, it is necessary in some cases to use rays which effectively transport equal amounts of energy per unit time (isoenergetic rays). The procedure given in the optical literature for generating isoenergetic rays is to distribute the ray intersections with the entrance pupil with uniform density per unit area. It is shown here that this procedure is not rigorously correct, and a correct procedure for generating isoenergetic rays is presented.

© 1985 Optical Society of America

Image formation by a general optical system. 1: General theory

Harold H. Hopkins
Appl. Opt. 24(16) 2491-2505 (1985)

Image formation by a general optical system. 2: Computing methods

Harold H. Hopkins
Appl. Opt. 24(16) 2506-2519 (1985)

Transverse ray aberrations for paraboloid–hyperboloid telescopes

Timo T. Saha
Appl. Opt. 24(12) 1856-1863 (1985)

Automatic design of optical systems using a set of general skew ray tracing formulas

You-Wen Zhang, Mo-Jun Chang, Cu-Wu Yang, and Hai-Cheng Tu
Appl. Opt. 27(8) 1574-1580 (1988)

Application of the flux flow equation to the Wolter I x-ray telescope and thin-film multilayered optics

Shao-Hua Chao and David L. Shealy
Appl. Opt. 25(12) 1997-2002 (1986)