H. Ries et al., PERFORMANCE LIMITATIONS OF ROTATIONALLY SYMMETRICAL NONIMAGING DEVICES, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science,and vision., 14(10), 1997, pp. 2855-2862
An upper limit on concentration for any optical device has previously
been derived from the conservation of etendue. In this contribution we
derive more stringent upper limits for the efficiency and the concent
ration of rotationally symmetric optical devices that are a consequenc
e of skewness conservation. If the desired source and target have diff
erent skewness distributions, then losses or dilution or both will lim
it the performance of the optical system. We calculate the limiting cu
rve of efficiency versus concentration and provide a design example th
at is virtually at this limit. We conjecture that even rotationally sy
mmetric problems may benefit from asymmetric optical systems. (C) 1997
Optical Society of America.