OSA's Digital Library

Journal of the Optical Society of America A

Journal of the Optical Society of America A

| OPTICS, IMAGE SCIENCE, AND VISION

  • Vol. 5, Iss. 11 — Nov. 1, 1988
  • pp: 1943–1956

Optical system assessment for design: numerical ray tracing in the Gaussian pupil

G. W. Forbes  »View Author Affiliations


JOSA A, Vol. 5, Issue 11, pp. 1943-1956 (1988)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/JOSAA.5.001943


View Full Text Article

Acrobat PDF (1979 KB)





Browse Journals / Lookup Meetings

Browse by Journal and Year


   


Lookup Conference Papers

Close Browse Journals / Lookup Meetings

Article Tools

Share
Citations

Abstract

The continuing rapid increase in available computing power has not reduced the importance of efficient methods of optical system assessment for automatic lens design. On the contrary, the new capabilities simply show that truly automatic optical design will eventually be accomplished. It is proposed that the merit of a system-assessment scheme be measured in terms of the accuracy of its estimation of the overall performance of a proposed system as a function of the amount of work done (e.g., number of rays traced). By using this criterion, a number of schemes based on ray tracing are compared, and some highly efficient assessment procedures are developed. As a simplifying approximation, the effects of vignetting and pupil distortion are ignored here. The key to the most-effective methods lies in coupling appropriate coordinates to Gaussian quadrature schemes. Appropriate coordinate systems are those for which the relevant integrands (either wave-front errors or transverse intercept errors) take the form of smooth functions. The resulting methods for system assessment are typically at least an order of magnitude more efficient than comparatively simple schemes.

© 1988 Optical Society of America

Citation
G. W. Forbes, "Optical system assessment for design: numerical ray tracing in the Gaussian pupil," J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 5, 1943-1956 (1988)
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/josaa/abstract.cfm?URI=josaa-5-11-1943

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Article level metrics are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

« Previous Article  |  Next Article »

OSA is a member of CrossRef.

CrossCheck Deposited