Global optimization with traveling aspherics: aspheric surface number as continuous variable
Akira Yabe · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2010
The aspherics is effective to reduce the number of lenses and to improve the performance of the optical system. The lens designer determines the surfaces to be aspheric and executes the optimization. But it is unknown a priori which surfaces should be aspheric. If the designer tries all the combination of the aspheric surface numbers, the number of the combination is very large. One method to solve this difficulty is to extend the aspheric surface number to a continuous variable and include it in the variables of the optimization. I would call it the traveling aspherics. The best surface number of the aspherics is determined through the optimization. The global optimization is necessary to get the best surface number of the aspherics. In section 1, the definition of the traveling aspherics is explained. In section 2, the design procedure with the traveling aspherics is explained. In section 3, the effect of the traveling aspherics is examined through a practical lens design problem. The method of the traveling aspherics can be applied to any complicated cases and requires no special experience of the lens design.