Solving tolerancing and three-dimensional beam shaping problems by multifunctional wave optical design

A strategy for designing optical systems that are optimized for multiple op tical functions on the basis of wave optics is presented. Each optical func tion is composed of an input field, a set of fixed system parameters, and a merit function. A design algorithm is proposed that is applicable for opti cal systems consisting of a transmission operator followed by an arbitrary linear operator. The goal is to find the transmission operator, which is op timal for all optical functions simultaneously. In later design steps, this transmission operator can be transformed to real optical elements, for ins tance, by using the thin element approximation. It is shown that the algori thm is efficiently applicable by investigating two sample applications for multifunctional wave optical design: the design of tolerant systems and 3-D beam shaping. (C) 2001 society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers.