Abstract

We present a new method for precise ray-tracing simulation considering form errors in the fabrication process of aspheric lenses. The Nagata patch, a quadratic interpolant for surface meshes using normal vectors, is adopted for representing the lens geometry with mid-spectral frequencies of surface profile errors. Several improvements in the ray–patch intersection calculation and its acceleration technique are also proposed. The developed algorithm is applied to ray-tracing simulation of optical disk pick-up aspheric objectives, and this technique requires ${10}^5$ to ${10}^9$ times fewer patches than a polygonal approximation. The simulation takes only several seconds on a standard PC.

© 2010 Optical Society of America

B-spline representation of optical surfaces and its accuracy in a ray trace algorithm

Philipp Jester, Christoph Menke, and Karsten Urban
Appl. Opt. 50(6) 822-828 (2011)

Ray-tracing method for isotropic inhomogeneous refractive-index media from arbitrary discrete input

Yohei Nishidate, Takashi Nagata, Shin-ya Morita, and Yutaka Yamagata
Appl. Opt. 50(26) 5192-5199 (2011)

Nonnull interferometer simulation for aspheric testing based on ray tracing

Chao Tian, Yongying Yang, Tao Wei, and Yongmo Zhuo
Appl. Opt. 50(20) 3559-3569 (2011)

Ray tracing method in phase space for two-dimensional optical systems

C. Filosa, J. H. M. ten Thije Boonkkamp, and W. L. IJzerman
Appl. Opt. 55(13) 3599-3606 (2016)

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)