Optical Surfaces has announced that it is able to produce highly aspheric lenses and off-axis/on-axis parabolic mirrors.
The requirement for highly aspheric mirrors and lenses is said to be particularly prevalent in space-borne optical systems, astronomical telescopes and the next generation of high-power laser systems.
Driven by the high cost of launching payloads into space - considerable demands are placed upon reducing the size and weight of optical systems.
Many of the designs for the new generation of astronomical telescopes use a segmented spherical primary mirror coupled with highly aspheric mirrors in order to compensate for the primary spherical aberration.
To achieve high laser-power densities, fusion researchers require the highest achievable optical throughput combined with pinpoint focusing capabilities.
The realisation of these optics, due to the required large aspherisation, is a real technical challenge for optical manufacturing.
Optical Surfaces said it is able to generate highly aspheric parabolic mirrors with off-axis angles approaching 30 degrees and focal lengths as short as 100mm.
The company added that it routinely produces highly aspheric, fast-focusing (to f 0.5) on-axis parabolic mirrors.
With its team of technicians and engineers, Optical Surfaces is also able to fabricate high-performance aspheric lenses with tight tolerances.
High performance is achieved with low surface scatter (20-10 scratch-dig) and high surface accuracy (lambda/20).
The complex surface profile of aspheres is said to offer good correction of spherical aberration and reduce other optical aberrations compared with a simple lens or mirror.
A single aspheric lens or mirror can often replace a much more complex multi-element system.
The resulting device is smaller and lighter, and sometimes cheaper than the multi-element design.
On-axis parabolic mirrors produce collimated reflected light and are used in applications that require very fast focusing and high-energy densities.
Off-axis parabolic mirrors provide an unobstructed aperture allowing complete access to the focal region as well as reducing the size and minimising the weight of a design.
They are said to be especially suitable for broadband or multiple wavelength applications due to their completely achromatic performance.
