Design of a Large Field of View and Low-Distortion Off-Axis Optical System Based on a Free-Form Surface

Abstract

Free-form surfaces have good aberration correction capability and balance capability for nonrotationally symmetric imaging systems. In this study, we analyzed the quantitative relationship between X–Y polynomial combination and aberration for the efficient design of X–Y free-form optical systems. The purpose of this study was to provide an exhaustive design method for off-axis triple inverse optical systems with X–Y free-form surfaces. Finally, we designed a free-form off-axis optical system with a large field of view (FOV) and low distortion based on the off-axis triple inverse optical system without an intermediate image plane. The primary mirror (PM) of the system adopted an X–Y polynomial free-form surface to correct the aberration of different FOVs of the system and improve the image width and quality. The optical system had a focal length of 1000 mm, an F-value of 9.5, an FOV angle of 23° × 1°, a maximum distortion grid in the FOV less than or equal to −0.05%, and a full-field average wave aberration better than 0.055 λ (λ/18.2, λ = 632.8 nm). The analysis of the design results showed that the system had high-quality imaging and a compact structure. This design method can provide a technical reference for the study of such free-form off-axis systems.