Freeform Optics - Will it be in your future?
Jannick Rolland
The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester
ABSTRACT Slow-servo diamond turning has revolutionized what is possible in optical fabrication. As a result, optical design provides new horizons where freeform surfaces may offer new degrees of freedom. In this talk we will provide a brief history of the emergence of freeform optics and point to a growing customer base. We will then discuss recent advances in surface shape descriptions for freeform optics from phi-polynomials to multi-centric radial basis functions. Finally, we will show how freeform surfaces may provide in one case study a factor of 10 in f-number and a factor of 10 in field area. Insight into the correction of aberrations will be provided and a metrology approach to testing freeform surfaces will be discussed.
Short BIO: Jannick Rolland is the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester (UofR) where she serves as Associate Director of the R.E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design and Engineering and directs the ODALab (www.odalab-spectrum.org). She also holds appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and in the Center for Visual Science. She earned an Optical Engineering Diploma from the Institut D'Optique Théorique et Appliquée, France, and an MS and PhD in Optical Science from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. Professor Rolland is a NYSTAR Fellow, a Fellow of OSA and SPIE, and a senior member of IEEE. Professor Rolland is serving on the Meetings Council of the OSA and is a Director at Large on the OSA Board of Directors.
