Abstract

Optical design relies on ray tracing to evaluate and optimize the performance of optical systems. Differential ray tracing, in which the ray properties are calculated together with their derivatives, has been shown to be of interest to improve the accuracy and speed of common optical design tasks. We present in this paper an algorithm capable of performing differential ray tracing in the general case. This algorithm is not constrained by a specific optical system geometry such as rotational symmetry or restricted to a set of surface definitions (e.g., conics, polynomial aspheres).

© 2017 Optical Society of America

Differential ray tracing in inhomogeneous media

Bryan D. Stone and G. W. Forbes
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 14(10) 2824-2836 (1997)

Automated freeform imaging system design with generalized ray tracing and simultaneous multi-surface analytic calculation

Yunfeng Nie, David R. Shafer, Heidi Ottevaere, Hugo Thienpont, and Fabian Duerr
Opt. Express 29(11) 17227-17245 (2021)

Freeform optical system design with differentiable three-dimensional ray tracing and unsupervised learning

Yunfeng Nie, Jingang Zhang, Runmu Su, and Heidi Ottevaere
Opt. Express 31(5) 7450-7465 (2023)

Generalized formulas for ray-tracing and longitudinal spherical aberration

Hassan A. Elagha
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 34(3) 335-343 (2017)

Analytic-domain lens design with proximate ray tracing

Nan Zheng, Nathan Hagen, and David J. Brady
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 27(8) 1791-1802 (2010)