Finding order in the design landscape of simple optical systems

Contrary to the frequent tacit assumption that the local minima of a merit function are points scattered more or less randomly over the design landscape, we have found that, at least for simple imaging systems (doublets with three and triplets with five variables) all design shapes we have observed thus far form a strictly ordered set of points,...

Finding new local minima in lens design landscapes by constructing saddle points

Predictability and unpredictability in optical system optimization

Local optimization algorithms, when they are optimized only for speed, have in certain situations an unpredictable behavior: starting points very close to each other lead after optimization to different minima. In these cases, the sets of points, which, when chosen as starting points for local optimization, lead to the same minimum (the so...

Practical guide to saddle-point construction in lens design

Saddle-point construction (SPC) is a new method to insert lenses into an existing design. With SPC, by inserting and extracting lenses new system shapes can be obtained very rapidly, and we believe that, if added to the optical designer’s arsenal, this new tool can significantly increase design productivity in certain situations. Despite the...

Looking for order in the optical design landscape

Poster presentation Optics Research Group TU Delft in cooperation with STW The presence of multiple local minima in the merit function landscape is one of the main difficulties in optical system design, especially for systems with many variables. By considering saddle points, we find a certain degree of order in the design landscape that...