Optical design of a 5× zoom afocal telescope with deformable mirrors

Abstract

All-reflective zoom afocal telescopes can be integrated with existing imaging systems as foreoptics, enabling flexible imaging with adjustable resolution. This paper proposes an approach to designing a 5× zoom afocal telescope using deformable mirrors. Based on matrix optics, the first-order parameters for a coaxial reflective 5× zoom afocal telescope with a fixed primary mirror and three deformable mirrors are determined. To prevent obscuration, the mirrors are tilted at their vertices, which introduces asymmetric aberrations. To correct these aberrations, XY polynomial surfaces are employed on the primary mirror and an additional flat fold mirror. The final design and image simulations indicate that the system achieves good image quality across all zoom positions, enabling 5× zoom imaging with a maximum root mean square wavefront error of less than 0.125λ (λ = 632.8 nm), thereby validating the efficacy of the proposed design methodology.