Computational Methods for Optical Design

Abstract

An overview of computational methods for solving geometrical optical design problems is presented. Starting with a description of the illumination design problem within an optimal transport framework, a general algorithm for constructing freeform illumination optics directly from a source and target light distribution is explored. To accompany that, an analytic derivation of theoretical optical efficiency for lens systems is constructed which can improve throughput efficiency by over 150\%. Then, a complete description of the imaging design problem is presented with some novel algorithmic approaches to solving it including an automated evolutionary sparse optimization algorithm and a machine learning approach. Some description of accelerated raytracing algorithms to speed up these methods will be presented as well.